Health

An op-ed written by Amy Jordan, Ph.D., director of APPC’s Media and the Developing Child area, and APPC Health Communication scholars Amy Bleakley, Ph.D., and Michael Hennessy, Ph.D., appears in the April 7 edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer. In the piece, titled “Media have a role in sex ed,” the authors argue that media should

A study coordinated by researchers at APPC demonstrates the effectiveness of community-based screening to combat the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in high-risk adolescents. The study found that African-American youth ages 14 to 17 who were identified as positive for at least one of three STIs subsequently reduced their number of sexual partners and

APPC scholars Amy Bleakley, Ph.D., Michael Hennessy, Ph.D., and Martin Fishbein, Ph.D., published a paper, “Predicting Preferences for Types of Sex Education in US Schools” (Sexuality Research and Social Policy), identifying characteristics related to sex education policy preferences in the United States. The authors used data from the Annenberg National Health Communication Survey.   Article

The grant is part of a $25.5 million award to the city of Philadelphia for anti-obesity and anti-tobacco programs from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Amy Jordan, Ph.D., Amy Bleakley, Ph.D., and Michael Hennessy, Ph.D., representing APPC’s Media and the Developing Child and Health Communication areas, will team up to help the

On Wednesday, February 24, Dr. Amy Jordan, head of APPC’s Media and the Developing Child program, provided testimony at Philadelphia City Council hearings on the complex challenges facing Philadelphia in the fight against obesity. The hearings – part of a larger initiative to promote healthy eating and physical activity in the community – aimed to

“Experts debunk suicide myth” (Washington Times) “Why the holiday suicide myth persists” (USA Today) Download the ACI press release

Despite the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s nine-year effort to debunk the connection, newspapers continue to perpetuate the myth that suicides rise during the end-of-year holiday period. According to an analysis of news reporting during last year’s (2008-09) holiday period, the proportion of stories that supported the myth remained at approximately the same level as during

Michael Hennessy, Ph.D., research analysis manager at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, was lead author of a paper, “Estimating the Longitudinal Association Between Adolescent Sexual Behavior and Exposure to Sexual Media Content,” published in the Journal of Sex Research. Co-authors were APPC’s Dr. Amy Bleakley, Professor Martin Fishbein (principal investigator of the study), and Dr.