We know you already have your tickets to the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, but we here at Upstream have found another interesting source of Pottermania besides the movie theater. HealthKey reports that a search for the term “Harry Potter” in the PubMed database will result in numerous scholarly works based on the young wizard and J.K. Rowling’s magical series of books.
PubMed, an online database of medical studies, lists 30 studies that invoke the young wizard — “Harry Potter and the Recessive Allele,” “Harry Potter and the Structural Biologist’s (Key)stone,” even “Harry Potter Casts a Spell on Accident-Prone Children.”
That last study found that children’s emergency department visits decreased significantly when new Harry Potter books went on sale. Conversely, a 2003 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the lengthy books actually caused an ailment dubbed “Hogwarts headache” among young readers who spent too much time reading them.
Other Harry-related research includes an investigation into how people identify with characters in fictional narratives and how the interactions of wizards and muggles can be used to teach kids about genetics.
Given the work on transportation into fictional narratives, this seems to be a promising scene for future health comm work. What other pop culture productions could be used as vehicles for research and education?
I think another interesting connection between Harry Potter and health that would be worth investigating is the perceived importance of individual choice in determining outcomes. A running theme in the series is that we are defined by the choices we make: despite genetic, environmental, and situational determinants, we ultimately decide our fate. Yet the current crusade in health communication — and in fact what the name of this blog captures — is that responsibility for change should not be viewed as resting entirely on the individual. So does this narrative (as compelling as it is) have potential to change our willingness to ascribe "blame" for poor health outcomes to the individual vs. the environment or other influences?
In addition, we can investigate the influence of watching the HP series on consumption of pumpkin juice!