How do newspapers deal with health in Sweden? A descriptive study

ObjectiveNewspapers in Sweden have a high amount of readers compared with other European countries. The purpose of this essay is to analyse the space related to health found in the Swedish newspapers and to discuss what readers consume about health.MethodsThis study is based on an observational cross-sectional design. The sample was constituted by daily editions from three major Swedish newspapers selected during 1 month—Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Nyheter and Göteborgs-Posten. Descriptive analyses was used.ResultsThe main findings show that newspapers included 2.4% on average of health contents (HC), being “Svenska Dagbladet” the one with most publications (3.3%). HC used to be published within the first pages (median in page 13, main mode in 4). 81.3% of all contents were written by journalists, and writers used sources of information in 73,6%. Most frequent topics were about cancer, alcohol, euthanasia and sick leave at work.Conclusions“Svenska Dagbladet” is the newspaper publishing more HC and also has more specialised health writers. Different sources are used in the contents like health professionals, professors and politicians. Research is needed on evaluating the quality of health contents.Practice implicationsIt is a need to increase the number of health specialist journalists and to promote independence when dealing about health.