Can TV Shows Change Health Care?

Physician-writers share secrets of success for telling medical stories

By M.R.F. BUCKLEY Education HMS Community

5 min read

Zoom screen grab of the lecture with Foster seated at a table and Baer speaking from a podium inside a classroom.
Foster, left, and Baer, speak about medical storytelling for television at a recent spring lecture at HMS. Image: Zoom

Getting treated for rape or reporting that you’ve been raped. Deciding whether to tell a partner you are HIV positive. Dealing with the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus or cervical cancer. Responding to an epidemic of gun violence. Understanding how climate change is threatening human health.

At first blush, these are not the light topics some viewers might associate with television entertainment, but they are the types of thorny subjects that Harvard Medical School alumni Neal Baer and David Foster have built stories around for decades in several award-winning television series. Their narratives on popular shows such as “ER,” “Law and Order SVU,” “House,” and “New Amsterdam,” among others, have won dozens of accolades. In the process they say, they've also educated the public.

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“You have to have the knowledge, the awareness, in order to change behavior. If you don’t have the awareness, then you’re not going to know to use condoms or get a vaccine,” said Baer at a recent HMS spring lecture devoted to the art of telling medical stories on television.

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Friends since medical school, Baer, MD ’96, and Foster, MD ’95, are uniquely qualified to talk about how to effectively tell medical stories in compelling ways to large audiences.

Baer has long worked both as a physician and Hollywood writer, showrunner, and producer, and his television work has been recognized with numerous Emmy nominations and other awards over the past 25 years.

Foster practiced at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center before relocating to Los Angeles to become a writer, producer, and co-executive producer on “House,” winning a Writer’s Guild of America Award that he shared with several others for an episode that aired in 2010. He went on to become an executive producer on the NBC drama “New Amsterdam,” a show that was inspired by a book set in New York’s Bellevue Hospital.

Although Baer told students during the April 14 talk that research data acquired after an “ER” episode on cervical cancer indicated that the viewing public did seek out information and learned about medical conditions and issues addressed in show episodes, show writers don’t always start off with a plan to educate viewers.

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“When we think about medical stories, it’s not about education or entertainment, it’s really about the story. I think about telling a really thoughtful, engrossing story that will bring the audience to think about their own lives,” he said.

Making personal stories public

Baer, who is currently leading HMS’ new Master of Science in Media, Medicine, and Health program, advised students interested in sharing medical stories with a broader audience to think about events in their own lives that piqued their interest in medicine or about experiences in hospitals or clinics that affected them deeply.

“I try hard to take my personal, private stories and make them public,” Baer said, adding that his material draws on direct experiences and observations that have inspired him.

Foster said he sometimes finds new topics by reading newspapers or talking to friends. Wherever the two physicians find source material, both said they are committed to creating dialogue and situations that are as medically and scientifically accurate as possible, inspired by their own time in exam or operating rooms, or by talking with medical colleagues.

“We would have dinners with residents, chief residents, attendings, fellows, and you’d always ask them, ‘What’s the thing you’ll never forget? What’s the funniest thing that ever happened? Saddest thing? The worst thing that happened to you? Mistakes?’” said Baer in an interview before the lecture.

The pair showed clips from some of the shows they've worked on to demonstrate the depth of accuracy and emotion they were able to achieve when dealing with difficult topics, such as amputation and patients’ rights. In a 2006 “Law and Order SUV” clip, the writers had a lead character equate gun violence with a medical emergency, saying in a courtroom scene, “Violence is the disease, guns are the virus. And we have an epidemic on our hands.”

Baer recounts his journey to Hollywood in this Harvard Medical Labcast, above

“There’s a lot of public health issues that have broad interest, and there are messages that are important for people to hear,” said Foster, but the public is often more interested in a single individual’s experience than in something that’s happening to thousands of people.

“How do we translate that broad message into an individual, the one story, something that’s memorable, that carries with it the emotion of an individual’s life? If 250 people are dying, it’s a news story; if it’s one person dying, it’s a tragedy. And how do we tell the story of that tragedy that reflects and resonates with the bigger public health issue that we’re interested in? It’s harder than it seems,” said Foster.

Baer said the mission of the HMS master’s program is to provide students with the tools to tell emotionally resonant stories grounded in data that can improve people’s health and well-being.

He said a truly inspiring story, fully supported by data, can not only inspire behavioral change but can sometimes even change health care policies or government practices. In one instance, he said, an episode of “Law and Order” focused on backlogs of untested rape kits, which spurred a campaign to raise awareness about the issue. As a result, a number of states moved to clear their backlogs, he said.

For the many students who routinely ask both writers how they too can get into the business of medical storytelling, Foster’s advice before the lecture was simple and straightforward.

“If you want to be a writer, write. And if you want to get a job as a writer, the first thing anybody’s going to ask is, ‘Well, show me something you’ve written.’ So, write what you know, and if you know about medicine, great.”