Steven Hoffman

Here was a very prominent athlete who is publicly disclosing being HIV-positive and opening up conversation around it for people, i think that's an example highlighting the positive role that celebrity can play in informing health decisions.

She is actually recommending practices that are unhealthful and potentially dangerous, recommending to people not to vaccinate their children means not only are the children being subjected to unnecessary harm, but many others around those children who might not be able to get vaccinated for legitimate reasons are put at an additional risk ask well.

Gwyneth Paltrow's messages, it's mostly that she's recommending practices that don't work, the biggest harm is the loss or waste of money and the misplaced attention away from practices that actually work.

Do celebrities have an impact on health outcomes? We know they do. ... There's so many studies out there that have demonstrated that when celebrities either give helpful or harmful advice to people, it's routinely followed, i do blame celebrities, because they need to recognize the impact they can have and the potential harm that can result from it.

In marketing literature, they talk about a halo effect around celebrities, whereby people have a very positive view of celebrities, and when celebrities endorse a product or recommend a particular health practice, it transfers their golden glow from the celebrity to the products or practice, in economics literature, there's recognition of something called signaling, which is whereby in a marketplace filled with competing ideas, people are constantly looking for a shortcut in order to identify which products or practices they should be following, and so a celebrity endorsing a product provides a cognitive shortcut to an otherwise very complicated decision.

We also saw several leading organizations in HIV prevention begin to use Charlie Sheen's disclosure as a way to promote HIV prevention. i think there probably are a lot of celebrities who want to do good and would be open to the idea of working with public health officials to do good.

The positive example I often point to is when Magic Johnson talked about being HIV-positive, which provided a moment to bust stigma around HIV.

The most prominent example of harm would be, in my mind, Jenny Mc... by Steven Hoffman

The most prominent example of harm would be, in my mind, Jenny McCarthy.