Films and TV: Viewing patterns and influence on behaviours of college students

This report is the result of a project entitled " Film and TV: Viewing patterns and influence on behaviours of college students, " undertaken as part of the Health and Population Innovation Fellowship (HPIF) awarded to the author in 2005. The HPIF programme is administered by the Population Council, New Delhi and is a continuation of the MacArthur Foundation's Fund for Leadership Development (FLD) fellowship programme that continued over the period 1995 to 2004. The Council is grateful to the MacArthur Foundation for its support to this programme. The HPIF programme aims to support mid-career individuals who have innovative ideas, leadership potential, and the capacity to help shape policy and public debate in the field of population, reproductive health and rights in general, with a focus on two priority themes—maternal mortality and morbidity, and the sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people. Since the transfer of the programme to the Population Council through 2006, a total of 17 individuals have been supported under the HPIF programme. The Population Council is an international, non-profit, non-governmental organisation that seeks to improve the well-being and reproductive health of current and future generations around the world and to help achieve a humane, equitable and sustainable balance between people and resources. The Council conducts biomedical, social science and public health research, and helps build research capacities in developing countries. About the author: Akhila Vasan is a public health researcher with the Foundation for Research in Health Systems (FRHS), Bangalore. She has led qualitative studies on understanding young people's sexuality and sexual behaviour, their peer groups and friendship relations. She has a PhD from the National Institute of Mental health & Neuroscience (NIMHANS) and has been part of NIMHANS' pioneering work on developing supportive supervision system for HIV counsellors in Karnataka. She is a member of the state unit of the People's Health Movement, the Janarogrya Andolana, Karnataka (JAAK)