Mind the gap! Confronting the challenges of translational communication research in entertainment-education

Abstract

Entertainment-education represents an intriguing area of translational communication research for health promotion and social change that can potentially connect theoretical models and principles with practices in the creative industry, governmental and non-governmental organizations, as well as communities in need. In this chapter, we point out the gap between what works in the lab and what works in reality through two examples of recent entertainment-education collaborations: one in the United States and the other in India. In both cases, we discuss the difficulties we encountered when applying textbook clean research designs to population groups whom the entertainment-education programs aimed to serve. Most importantly, we share insights about strategic communication among project partners that are never taught in the textbook but ultimately helped us adapt during the implementation process to ensure quality program evaluation and beyond.