Vaccines/New Media Film Festival

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The Vaccines and New Media “Film Festival” featured a keynote address by Hollywood, Health & Society Director Sandra de Castro Buffington on working with scriptwriters to create global health storylines.

Her talk, presented March 16 in Washington, D.C., featured clips of TV storylines created with HH&S input, including vaccines on NBC’s “Law & Order: SVU,”  traumatic brain injury on Lifetime’s “Army Wives” and HIV/AIDS on CBS’s “The Bold and the Beautiful.”

The event was presented by the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) and SmartGlobalHealth.org,, and explored how global health organizations and private foundations are making the case for U.S. investments in worldwide immunization—using online videos and social media to reach policymakers and the American public.

Other participants included Amie Batson, deputy assistant administrator for global health, United States Agency for International Development; Nicole Bates, senior program officer, Global Health Policy & Advocacy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; John Donnelly, global health writer and vice president, Burness Communications; Janet Fleischman, senior associate, CSIS Global Health Policy Center; Dan Green, deputy director, Strategic Partnerships at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and Stephen Morrison, director of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center.

After the Vaccines/New Media film event, Buffington was a guest speaker at Georgetown University’s Hoyawood Club, which focuses on entertainment for the social good. The organization is dedicated to creating a dialogue among students interested in the entertainment industry by connecting them with media leaders through various film screenings and panel discussions on campus.

Hollywood, Health & Society is a program of the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center that provides entertainment industry professionals with accurate and timely information for health storylines. SmartGlobalHealth.org is the website for the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, a leading policy research institution focused on building bipartisan awareness about global health and its importance to U.S. national security.