Does celebrity involvement in public health campaigns deliver long term benefit? Yes

Celebrities seem to appear often in news reports about health and medicine. Since 2005, my research group has recorded all health related content on all five free-to-air Sydney TV channels. As of 21 August 2011, 1657/29 322 (6%) of news items have featured celebrities, which is substantially lower than the proportion featuring people experiencing disease or injury (60%), experts and health workers (50%), and politicians (49%).1 Celebrities often get involved because of personal experience with a disease or because they share the concerns of other citizens and want to help by offering the publicity magnet intrinsic to their celebrity. And like experts, some probably calculate that a public profile on good causes might also be good for their careers.