Multidisciplinary approaches are able to provide holistic analyses and results. Many would not inherently put public health and media studies together for a project. However they are related because the unknown, especially disease, has always frightened people. Stories about disease continue to be a part of the human experience, teaching social conformity or acting as warnings against specific places or behaviors. The vampire character has consistently been a metaphor for infectious disease. This study incorporated the media studies and public health disciplines to analyze ten of the top grossing American vampire films from 2000-2012 to understand whether or not vampire film narratives portray infectious disease realistically, supporting public health positions. Results indicate that these movies do not enforce the idea that infectious disease are preventable, instead promoting the audience to empathize with the vampire character. This potentially has significant application for the public health industry, specifically for understanding and predicting how the public views infectious disease.
