Health Communication- Application

In the movie And the Band Played On, health communication is a very important part of the movie. The researchers in the movie are trying their hardest to discover what this new virus is that is killing so many people very quickly. They have to track friends, family and the sexual relationships of the patients they are dealing with in order to rule every possible scenario out. The majority of the people infected are gay men, so that is a start for the researchers to discover that the virus could be spreading between homosexual relationships. The research that is being done to help the cause eventually leads to homosexual bath houses as a potential risk to catching this new disease. The gay community does not want to shut these bath houses down because they feel like they are being discriminated against. The doctors discover with the help of another researcher from the Center for Disease Control who has been working on feline leukemia, that the new outbreak is AIDS.

The theory of planned behavior model can be seen in use in this movie because of the three factors that must determine a persons intention. The pros and cons have been weighed by the people performing the research of this new outbreak and they feel that their intention to help the population is greater than protecting the feelings of some people. The subjective norm is shown through the social pressure from the gay community to discover what is killing so many people so quickly. It is also shown through the friends and family of the people that have been diagnosed with this disease or that have already died from it. And the perceived behavioral control is shown through the confidence of the doctors that they can discover what this outbreak is and that they can contain it.