2006 Media Smart Research Award

Health professionals have increasingly recognized media use as a significant influence on American’s health. Can media literacy education—teaching youth to use critical thinking skills to understand media messages—be used to help students resist harmful behaviors and lifestyle choices? That’s what Mary E. Carney, MPH, the first winner of Cable in the Classroom’s Media Smart Research Awards, wanted to find out in her paper, Using Media Literacy Education for Health Promotion.

Carney's research included a qualitative meta-analysis of 24 peer-reviewed publications describing evaluations of media literacy interventions with a health-promotion purpose. The findings and implications contain important insights that should inform the development of health education programs and media literacy curricula.


Download: Using Media Literacy Education for Health Promotion [PDF]

In addition to a $2,000 prize, Ms. Carney and her mentor, Dr. Lynda Bergsma, were brought to Washington, DC, to present the findings to an audience of education leaders.

Listen to a podcast [MP3, 29MB] of the presentation.

Learn more about the Media Smart Research Awards program.