CPH epidemiology program manager Brittney Keller-Hamilton was announced as one of five winners in the 2018 annual Preventing Chronic Disease Student Research Paper Contest.
Epidemiology program manager Brittney Keller-Hamilton was announced as one of five winners in the 2018 annual Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD) Student Research Paper Contest.
Keller-Hamilton was awarded in the doctoral category for her paper titled “Tobacco and Alcohol on Television: A Content Analysis of Male Adolescents’ Favorite Shows.” Out of 109 total submissions, one winner was selected from each of the doctoral, undergraduate and high school categories, and two were chosen in the graduate category.
Prior to her research, television tobacco and alcohol portrayals had not been examined for more than seven years, according to Keller-Hamilton. After studying 1,220 adolescent males and their favorite television programs, nine of the 20 most popular shows rated TV-14 were randomly selected and found to have exposed the boys to approximately one tobacco incident and 21 alcohol incidents per hour.
“An implication is that if kids are watching a lot of TV shows with this, they may be more likely to use these products themselves,” Keller-Hamilton said. “There is no consideration of tobacco and alcohol portrayals that go into TV ratings, so parents can’t use ratings as they are to decide whether the show is appropriate for their kid.”
