The Impact Of Social Media On Public Health Reseach And Practice

THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH AND PRACTICE a conversa*on with Gonzalo Bacigalupe Technology developments are moving us towards the predominance of cloud compu7ng, collabora7ve exchange, and social networking over the use of technology as just storage, mul7tasking, and faster ways of carrying on business as usual. These developments s7mulate new ways of collec7ng data, developing messages, and sharing informa7on. No7ons of exper7se, control, hierarchy, acquisi7on of knowledge, locality, iden7ty, privacy, etc. are all in ﬂux as social media is adopted by popula7ons worldwide. We explore some of these technologies and how they may reshape public health prac7ce. gonzalo.bacigalupe@umb.edu

Personal Health Technology: Future? hIp://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=083e1117‐9f61‐40e1‐aea4‐b31e7baa8f13

What is public health? • 

The effect of Web 2.0 on medical pracGce and educaGon: Web 2.0 is a term describing new collabora7ve Internet applica7ons. The primary difference from the original World Wide Web is greater user par7cipa7on in developing and managing content, which changes the nature and value of the informa7on. Key elements of Web 2.0 include: Really Simple Syndica7on (RSS) to rapidly disseminate awareness of new informa7on; blogs to describe new trends; wikis to share knowledge; and podcasts to make informa7on available quot;on the movequot;. Increasing role in providing health informa7on quot;any 7me, any placequot;. McLean, R., Richards, B. H., & Wardman, J. I. (2007). The effect of Web 2.0 on the future of medical prac7ce and educa7on: Darwikinian evolu7on or folksonomic revolu7on? Medical Journal of Australia, 187(3), 174‐177.

Web 2.0 Social soKware in health and health care educaGon Web 2.0 sociable technologies and social soeware: enablers in health and health care, for organiza7ons, clinicians, pa7ents and laypersons. They include social networking services, collabora7ve filtering, social bookmarking, folksonomies, social search engines, file sharing and tagging, mashups, instant messaging, and online mul7‐player games. The more popular Web 2.0 applica7ons in educa7on, namely wikis, blogs and podcasts, are but the 7p of the social soeware iceberg. Web 2.0 technologies represent a quite revolu7onary way of managing and repurposing/remixing online informa7on and knowledge repositories, including clinical and research informa7on, in comparison with the tradi7onal Web 1.0 model. (…) tools presented in this review look very promising and poten7ally fit for purpose in many health care applica7ons and scenarios, careful thinking, tes7ng and evalua7on research are s7ll needed in order to establish 'best prac7ce models' for leveraging these emerging technologies to boost our teaching and learning produc7vity, foster stronger 'communi7es of prac7ce', and support con7nuing medical educa7on/professional development and pa7ent educa7on. Kamel Boulos, M. N., & Wheeler, S. (2007). The emerging Web 2.0 social soeware: an enabling suite of sociable technologies in health and health care educa7on. Health Info Libr J, 24(1), 2‐23.

E‐learning way of e‐learning A wide range of social soeware has become readily available to young people. There is increasing interest in possibili7es of using social soeware for undergraduate medical educa7on. To iden7fy the nature and extent of the use of social soeware by first year medical students. Structured self‐administered ques7onnaire survey. Over 90 percent used instant messaging and social networking sites were highly used (70 percent). No significant difference between males and females. Blogs were read by about a fieh of students and a small number (8%) wrote their own blogs. A fieh of males stated that they were users of media sharing and contributed to wikis. Social bookmarking was rarely used by either sex. Medical educators need to recognize the poten7al of social soeware in undergraduate medical educa7on but it is essen7al that students maintain the informality and privacy of these sites. The challenge for all medical educators is how to integrate social soeware into current curricula and ins7tu7onal Virtual Learning Environments. Sandars, J., Homer, M., Pell, G., & Croker, T. (2008). Web 2.0 and social soeware: the medical student way of e‐learning. Medical Teacher, 1‐5.

Scaling the Skills Learning

Public Health Research

Federal Government Social Media Federal health agencies relied heavily on social media to inform the public about the recent outbreak of salmonella tainted peanut buIer, possibly reducing the number of death and injuries caused by the illness, according to federal health oﬃcials. quot;The response has been really amazing,quot; said Janice Nall, director of the division of eHealth marke7ng at CDC, on the public's reac7on to her agency's social media campaign. quot;We look at social media as addi7onal channels to reach people where they are.” GAUTHAM NAGESH 02/09/2009 hIp://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ ng_20090209_7840.php

PrevenGon

Social markeGng / Social Media Users control communica7on in second genera7on of Internet‐based applica7ons, holding promise to significantly enhance promo7onal efforts within social marke7ng campaigns: • directly engaging consumers in the crea7ve process by both producing and distribu7ng informa7on through collabora7ve wri7ng, content sharing, social networking, social bookmarking, and syndica7on. • enhancing the power of viral marke7ng by increasing the speed at which consumers share experiences and opinions with progressively larger audiences. Because of the novelty and poten7al effec7veness of Web 2.0, social marketers may be en7ced to prematurely incorporate related applica7ons into promo7onal plans. But as strategic issues such as priority audience preferences, selec7on of appropriate applica7ons, tracking and evalua7on, and related costs are carefully considered, Web 2.0 will expand to allow health promo7on prac77oners more direct access to consumers with less dependency on tradi7onal communica7on channels. Thackeray, R., Neiger, B. L., Hanson, C. L., & McKenzie, J. F. (2008). Enhancing promo7onal strategies within social marke7ng programs: use of Web 2.0 social media. Health Promot Pract, 9(4), 338‐343.

Social Marke7ng

Knowledge intermedia7on: source credibility not enough As a result of the social process of disintermedia7on enabled by digital media, tradi7onal intermediaries are replaced by apomediaries: tools and peers standing by to guide consumers to trustworthy informa7on, or adding credibility to informa7on. For apomedia7on to be an aIrac7ve and successful model for consumers, the recipient has to reach a certain degree of maturity and autonomy. Different degrees of autonomy may explain differences in informa7on seeking and credibility appraisal behaviors. In this environment, tools, influen7al peers and opinion leaders are the primary conveyors of trust and credibility. Apomediary credibility may become equally or more important than source credibility or even message credibility. Network analysis could be useful to study the dynamics of apomediary credibility in a networked digital world. There are prac7cal implica7ons of the apomedia7on model for developers of consumer health websites which aspire to come across as quot;credible”: Consumers need and want to be able to be co‐creators of content, not merely be an audience who is broadcasted to. Web2.0 technology enables such sites. Engaging and credible Web sites are about building community and communi7es are built upon personal and social needs. Eysenbach, G. (2007). From intermedia7on to disintermedia7on and apomedia7on: new models for consumers to access and assess the credibility of health informa7on in the age of Web2.0. Studies in Health Technology and Informa*cs, 129(Pt 1), 162‐166.

Social networking can shape services We report on a thread discussing the controversial decision to use hormone replacement therapy (HRT) following prophylac7c oophorectomy (PO). Two main groups of women posted: (1) Women who were BRCA+, had completed PO, and were deba7ng or adjus7ng their HRT op7ons in terms of op7mizing both quality and quan7ty of life. (2) Women who were BRCA+, were contempla7ng PO, but wanted to beIer understand the poten7al physical and psychological consequences of surgical menopause before deciding. Frustrated by physicians' lack of knowledge and contradictory media ar7cles about the long‐term consequences of HRT in BRCA+ women, they sought resources, emo7onal support and speciﬁc experien7al knowledge from each other and generated a unique sense of community and a high level of trust. Kenen, R. H., Shapiro, P. J., Friedman, S., & Coyne, J. C. (2007). Peer‐support in coping with medical uncertainty: discussion of oophorectomy and hormone replacement therapy on a web‐based message board. Psycho‐Oncology, 16(8), 763‐771.

Web‐based self‐help interven7on: RCTs Four weeks Web‐based course: Among all par7cipants, the interven7on was effec7ve in reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety as well as in enhancing quality of life. A higher percentage of pa7ents in the interven7on group experienced a significant improvement in symptoms. The course was less effec7ve for work‐related stress, but par7cipants in the interven7on group recovered more oeen from burnout than those in the control group. Sta7s7cal and clinical significant effects on symptoms of depression and anxiety. These effects were even more pronounced among par7cipants with more severe baseline problems and for par7cipants who fully completed the course. Effects on work‐related stress and quality of life were less clear. CigareTe smoking is a major risk factor for many chronic and fatal illnesses. Stopping smoking directly reduces those risks. The primary outcome measure was prolonged abs7nence from smoking. Secondary outcomes were point‐prevalence abs7nence, number of cigareIes smoked, and incidence of quit aIempts reported at follow‐up assessments. Effec7ve web‐based programs can poten7ally help large numbers of smokers to quit, thus having a major public health impact. Kramer, J. J., Willemsen, M. C., Conijn, B., van Emst, A. J., Bruns7ng, S., & Riper, H. (2009). Effec7veness of a web‐ based self‐help smoking cessa7on interven7on: protocol of a randomised controlled trial. BMC Public Health, 9, 32. van Straten, A., Cuijpers, P., & Smits, N. (2008). Effec7veness of a web‐based self‐help interven7on for symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress: randomized controlled trial. J Med Internet Res, 10(1), e7.

Empowering health consumers Consumer health informa7cs has emerged as a strategy to inform and empower pa7ents for self management of their health. The emergence of and explosion in use of user‐generated online media (e.g., blogs) has created new opportuni7es to inform and educate people about healthy living. Under a preven7on research project, we are developing a website that u7lizes social content collabora7on mediums in conjunc7on with open‐source technologies to create a community‐ driven resource that provides users with tailored health informa7on. Khan, S. A., McFarlane, D. J., Li, J., Ancker, J. S., Hutchinson, C., Cohall, A., et al. (2007). Healthy Harlem: empowering health consumers through social networking, tailoring and web 2.0 technologies. AMIA Annu Symp Proc, 1007.

Access to clinicians

Challenges

Health Policy BoIom Up Approach

Google Uses Searches may be able to detect regional outbreaks of the ﬂu a week to 10 days before they are reported by the CDC

www.google.org/ﬂutrends

Mashup Technology: not just for play hIp://irevolu7on.wordpress.com/2008/09/03/mapme‐applica7ons‐for‐humanitarian‐mapping

Disaster Management If we are to make good on the UNISDR’s call for a shi[ towards people‐centered early warning, then ﬂood early warning/response systems ought to empower local communi*es to get out of harm’s way and minimize loss of livelihood. This shi[ in discourse and opera*onal mandate is an important one in my opinion. Centralized, state‐centered, top‐down, external responses to crises are apparently increasingly ineﬀec*ve. hIp://irevolu7on.wordpress.com/2008/09/07/mumbai

Flood Warning, Mobile Phones and Dynamic Mapping in India (September 7, 2008) •  Today, one in four Indians has a mobile phone. […] From the villager siwng atop his half‐drowned hut calling for help in ﬂood‐hit Bihar, to the kabadiwallah who eagerly hands you his number, it’s mobile networking like never before.“ •  […] the mobile phone’s ‘greatest impact [will] be on those people with professions that are 7me, loca7on and informa7on sensi7ve. […] ﬁshermen wan7ng a weather update or the loca7on of the best catch; hospitals contac7ng pa7ents without a permanent address; SMSes on the Sensex.” •  “It is true that network coverage and mobile penetra7on are s7ll limited to certain areas. But, interes7ngly, as a study by the Center for Knowledge Socie7es (CKS) showed in Maharashtra, Up and Karnataka, many new mobile users belong to poorer areas with scarce infrastructure, high levels of illiteracy and low PC and internet penetra7on.” hIp://irevolu7on.wordpress.com/2008/09/07/mumbai

Mobile Phones for Change

Website Collabora7ve Mashups

Humanitarian Crises: Kenya Example

A changing work environment

http://ehealthglobalhealth.com	11
http://www.slideshare.net	9
http://healthglobal.wordpress.com	5

The Impact Of Social Media On Public Health Reseach And Practice

by bacigalupe on Mar 23, 2009

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The Impact Of Social Media On Public Health Reseach And Practice — Presentation Transcript