project
East Los High
Making a Difference
East Los High Season One Preview
The Challenge
When PMC began formative research for its first U.S. television project, the data was stark: more than 50% of Latinas in the U.S. were becoming pregnant before age 20 — the highest rate of any major ethnic group in the country. And yet young Latinos were almost entirely absent from the shows that shaped how teens saw themselves, their relationships, and their choices.
The Approach
PMC created the first season with Hulu, training a talented creative team to create something that didn’t exist: a steamy, fast-paced teen drama rooted in the lives of Latino students in East Los Angeles — with evidence-based sexual and reproductive health messaging woven into every storyline. The show’s success led Hulu to renew it — making it the longest-running series on the platform at the time — and PMC partnered with Wise Entertainment for production of subsequent seasons.
But the show didn’t stop at the screen. PMC built a transmedia ecosystem around East Los High, partnering with organizations like Planned Parenthood and Stay Teen to connect viewers directly with reproductive health resources at the moment storylines moved them to act.
Extending the East Los High Universe
The Story
The series followed young people navigating the universal pressures of high school — relationships, identity, ambition, sex, and belonging — in a community rarely seen on screen. Storylines tackled contraception, STI testing, teen pregnancy, domestic violence, and sexual assault, not as after-school-special lessons, but as the lived realities of characters audiences came to love.
The Hollywood Reporter called it “a hit drama with all the elements of a racy telenovela, designed to teach as much as titillate.” The Huffington Post said simply: “Hulu is making history.”
The Impact
East Los High rose to become one of Hulu’s top five shows in its first month and attracted over one million unique visitors monthly to Hulu’s Latino page. The impact off-screen was just as striking:
Over 27,000 people used Planned Parenthood’s “The Check” widget on EastLosHigh.com in the first month of broadcast to explore whether they needed STI, HIV, or pregnancy testing — accounting for 22% of Planned Parenthood’s total widget visits during season one. The show doubled StayTeen.org’s website traffic on launch day. More than 98% of viewers who used the transmedia resources said they found them incredibly helpful. And research published in the American Journal of Public Health confirmed that viewers demonstrated high levels of narrative engagement and that the series spurred interpersonal conversations — particularly among Latina viewers, who discussed the show with friends, siblings, and parents through social media, text, and face-to-face conversations.
The series didn’t ask young people to sit through a health lecture. It gave them characters they recognized, stories they couldn’t stop watching, and a path to the resources they needed — right when they needed them.
Funders
Argosy Foundation
Blue Shield of California Foundation
California Endowment
Poses Family Foundation
Private Funder
See our work in action
Explore other projects where PMC’s methodology met massive audiences — and changed the conversation.
