As we know, Dr. Campisi "loves" Gwyenth Paltrow and her take on specific health care issues. The issue of celebrity endorsement has become even more apparent with the current COVID-19 pandemic. But what kind of power and impact do celebrities like Gwyenth Paltrow have on the public's view on health care issues, and should they be held responsible for the consequences their words can have?
Celebrity endorsement can have positive and negative effects on the health care activities of the public. Let us focus first on the positive outcomes that have come from celebrity endorsement. One example of a positive outcome is the so called "Angelina Jolie" effect that occurred within the UK in 2013 after she received a test for the BRCA1 gene and underwent a risk reducing mastectomy (Evans et al., 2014). The “Angelina Jolie” effect saw a 2.5-fold increase in genetic referrals for BRCA gene testing that lasted for 6 months, longer than the usual health fad that news programs report on (Evans et al., 2014). This effect was combined with an effort by NICE to create guidelines for familial breast cancer, as such the effect helped spread awareness of the new guidelines and kept them in the news circuit for longer than they would have without a celebrity name attached to it.
However, despite this success in spreading awareness for breast cancer screening, many times celebrity endorsements have a negative impact on the public’s health care attitudes. The most common negative celebrity endorsement are fad diets targeted at women to help lose weight, which have the obvious side effects of not actually working and emphasizing the negative attitude associated weight loss. The more innocent diet trends that claim to provide cardiovascular protection also have negative effects. Many of the minerals, vitamins, and supplements endorsed by celebrities have no link to cardiovascular protection and may actually instead increase the risk for stroke (Mookadam et al., 2019). One of the most prevalent health care topics affected by celebrity endorsements is the topic of vaccines, especially the COVID-19 vaccine. In a study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation only 22% of the people surveyed didn’t believe any of the false statements presented to them about the current COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccine (Saey, 2021). When combined with celebrity endorsement more people are willing to pay attention to the information presented, however, in most cases this doesn’t relate to a change in the original attitude to the information presented (Rollins et al., 2014). Despite the lack of change in opinion towards certain information, I believe that having celebrity endorsement when presenting new information may have a greater impact on the public then without celebrity endorsement.
As we discussed during our second TBL, celebrities are not legally responsible for the outcomes caused by their endorsements. Despite this there should be some regulation on what celebrities are allowed to endorse in regard to health care topics. Due to previous success in celebrity endorsements in creating an outcome, they should not be disregarded as an important tool in helping increase awareness over health issues, however, their endorsements should be presented alongside reported studies or government agency recommendations. News outlets should provide more coverage for celebrity endorsements backed by studies and less to those that are just composed of the celebrity’s own opinion. Celebrities should try to uphold the bioethics of non-malfeasances when they endorse health care opinions and be mindful of how they can benefit those they influence. Justice should also be provided for those without the resources to double check the celebrity endorsements by ensuring that celebrity endorsements are backed by reputable studies.
Evans, D. G., Barwell, J., Eccles, D. M., Collins, A., Izatt, L., Jacobs, C., Donaldson, A., Brady, A. F., Cuthbert, A., Harrison, R., Thomas, S., Howell, A., Miedzybrodzka, Z., & Murray, A. (2014). The angelina jolie effect: How high celebrity profile can have a major impact on provision of cancer related services. Breast Cancer Research, 16(5). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13058-014-0442-6
Mookadam, F., Oz, M., Siddiqi, T. J., Almader-Douglas, D., Crupain, M., & Khan, M. S. (2019). Impact of unauthorized celebrity endorsements on Cardiovascular Healthcare. Future Cardiology, 15(6), 387–390. https://doi.org/10.2217/fca-2019-0020
Rollins, B., & Bhutada, N. (2014). Impact of celebrity endorsements in disease-specific direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertisements. International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing, 8(2), 164–177. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijphm-05-2013-0024
Saey, T. H. (2021, November 11). No, Covid-19 vaccines won’t make you infertile. Science News.
Hi Adrianne,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your stance of celebrity endorsements. I think we as a society have development a reliance of celebrities to tell us what we should and shouldn't do in regards to daily life aspects like the way we dress or what we eat and even what we do for physical activity. While it is true that there are some benefits for following these trends it's usually by luck and not because it is based on scientific evidence. I think celebrities should be held accountable to some degree in the health related ideas they promote to prevent any harm to those that decide to follow. Something like adding a study or two throughout their promotions might help decrease the level of negative effects.
I think an important aspect of celebrity endorsement is that today they are capable of reaching an increased level of influenced opinions as they may use different types of social media platforms and the more recently form of celebrities, "influencers". I came across this concept in this article: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11607&context=theses