Proceedings from the Enter-Educate Conference: Entertainment for Social Change March 29 - April 1 1989.

In 1989 health family planning and entertainment professionals gathered in Los Angeles California for the 1st international conference on Entertainment for Social Change. It served as a means for sharing and exploring the different ways entertainment promotes social change. The music panel included singers from Nigeria Mexico and the Philippines who discussed the success of their hit songs and promoting sexual responsibility. 2 such songs were on the hit parade in Latin America for >6 weeks with 1 song at the top in Mexico for 5 months. Producers a talk show host and a marketing professional spoke about their roles in bringing about social change via radio. A radio producer discussed using traditional beliefs in Jamaica to design popular soap operas with family planning messages. An actor a public health official and 2 producers examined motion pictures role in stimulating social change. Following the success of a mid 1980s film about illiteracy in Bangladesh 3 other films have dealt with family planning oral rehydration and teenage pregnancy. Print media professionals spoke of the power of comics pop journalism and graphics to effectively communicate health messages. In San Francisco 3 boxes of comic books about sexually transmitted diseases were emptied within minutes. The research panel examined ways of measuring the success of using the mass media to instigate changes in social behavior. A survey in the Philippines showed that with 92% of the young remembered a song about sexual responsibility and 70% interpreted the song appropriately. 1 television panel discussed if TV promotes unhealthy behavior or just reflects the unhealthy behavior of society. Another TV panel addressed sex and the soap operas. Other feature events included speeches about promoting public health from an Asian and an African perspective and using US soap operas as teaching tools.