April 18 - After three popular prime-time medical dramas reportedly featured storylines about the health hazards of using e-cigarettes, hundreds of people took to Twitter to comment - including some who said they planned to quit because of what they saw on the show.

A new analysis, led by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health and published in the Journal of Health Communication, examined these tweets to gain insight into the use of television shows to share public health information.

Following the January 2020 episode of New Amsterdam, Chicago Medicine and Grey's Anatomy, each of which contained episodes involving teenagers with vaping-related lung injury (also known as EVALI), at least 641 tweets commented on the show and vaping.

Nearly half of the tweets commented on the realism of the storylines, with 23.1 percent saying they liked them, although a significant number commented that the shows were unrealistic, in part because they did not involve e-cigarettes containing cannabis oil. About 12 percent of tweets expressed knowledge about vaping, and 4.4 percent mentioned behavior, including plans to quit vaping.

"Given the rapid increase in e-cigarette use among adolescents in the United States, it is critical for public health professionals to develop ways to effectively communicate the dangers of e-cigarettes to young people." Lead author Beth Hoffman, PhD, said, "Our analysis suggests that prime-time television may be an effective way to positively shape viewers' awareness of the dangers associated with e-cigarette use."