Challenges to Transforming Unconventional Social Media Data into Actionable Knowledge for Public Health Systems During Disasters

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Chan ◽  
Hemant Purohit
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Health Service ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Service Personnel ◽  
Public Health Systems ◽  
Media Research ◽  
Social Media Research ◽  
The Right

ABSTRACTEvery year, there are larger and more severe disasters and health organizations are struggling to respond with services to keep public health systems running. Making decisions with limited health information can negatively affect response activities and impact morbidity and mortality. An overarching challenge is getting the right health information to the right health service personnel at the right time. As responding agencies engage in social media (eg, Twitter, Facebook) to communicate with the public, new opportunities emerge to leverage this non-traditional information for improved situational awareness. Transforming these big data is dependent on computers to process and filter content for health information categories relevant to health responders. To enable a more health-focused approach to social media analysis during disasters, 2 major research challenges should be addressed: (1) advancing methodologies to extract relevant information for health services and creating dynamic knowledge bases that address both the global and US disaster contexts, and (2) expanding social media research for disaster informatics to focus on health response activities. There is a lack of attention on health-focused social media research beyond epidemiologic surveillance. Future research will require approaches that address challenges of domain-aware, including multilingual language understanding in artificial intelligence for disaster health information extraction. New research will need to focus on the primary goal of health providers, whose priority is to get the right health information to the right medical and public health service personnel at the right time.

scholarly journals Competing health policies: insurance against universal public systems

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Asa Ebba Cristina Laurell
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Health Coverage ◽  
Access To Services ◽  
Public Health Systems ◽  
Good Medicine ◽  
The Right ◽  
Compare And Contrast ◽  
Universal Health

Objectives: This article analyzes the content and outcome of ongoing health reforms in Latin America: Universal Health Coverage with Health Insurance, and the Universal and Public Health Systems. It aims to compare and contrast the conceptual framework and practice of each and verify their concrete results regarding the guarantee of the right to health and access to required services. It identifies a direct relationship between the development model and the type of reform. The neoclassical-neoliberal model has succeeded in converting health into a field of privatized profits, but has failed to guarantee the right to health and access to services, which has discredited the governments. The reform of the progressive governments has succeeded in expanding access to services and ensuring the right to health, but faces difficulties and tensions related to the permanence of a powerful, private, industrial-insurance medical complex and persistence of the ideologies about medicalized 'good medicine'. Based on these findings, some strategies to strengthen unique and supportive public health systems are proposed.

Advancing Health Rights in a Globalized World: Responding to Globalization through a Collective Human Right to Public Health

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 545-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Mason Meier
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Health Inequities ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Public Health Systems ◽  
The Right ◽  
Health Rights ◽  
Globalized World

In confronting the insalubrious ramifications of globalization, human rights scholars and activists have argued for greater national and international responsibility pursuant to the human right to health. Codified seminally in Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the right to health proclaims that states bear an obligation to realize the “highest attainable standard” of health for all. However, in pressing for the highest attainable standard for each individual, the right to health has been ineffective in compelling states to address burgeoning inequalities in underlying determinants of health, focusing on individual medical treatments at the expense of public health systems. This article contends that the paradigm of individual health, focused on a right to individual medical care, is incapable of responding to health inequities in a globalized world and thereby hampers efforts to operationalize health rights through public health systems. While the right to health has evolved in international discourse over time, this evolution of the individual right to health cannot address the harmful societal ramifications of economic globalization. Rather than relying solely upon an individual right to medical care, envisioning a collective right to public health – a right applied at the societal level to address underlying determinants of health – would alleviate many of the injurious health inequities of globalization.

scholarly journals A Call for a Public Health Agenda for Social Media Research

10.2196/16661 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. e16661 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherry Pagoto ◽  
Molly E Waring ◽  
Ran Xu
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Media Use ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Research ◽  
Social Media Research ◽  
Health And Well Being ◽  
Health Agenda

Research has revealed both the benefits and harms of social media use, but the public has very little guidance on how best to use social media to maximize the benefits to their health and well-being while minimizing the potential harms. Given that social media is intricately embedded in our lives, and we now have an entire generation of social media natives, the time has come for a public health research agenda to guide not only the public’s use of social media but also the design of social media platforms in ways that improve health and well-being. In this viewpoint we propose such a public health agenda for social media research that is framed around three broad questions: (1) How much social media use is unhealthy and what individual and contextual factors shape that relationship; (2) What are ways social media can be used to improve physical and mental well-being; and (3) How does health (mis)information spread, how does it shape attitudes, beliefs and behavior, and what policies or public health strategies are effective in disseminating legitimate health information while curbing the spread of health misinformation? We also discuss four key challenges that impede progress on this research agenda: negative sentiment about social media among the public and scientific community, a poorly regulated research landscape, poor access to social media data, and the lack of a cohesive academic field. Social media has revolutionized modern communication in ways that bring us closer to a global society, but we currently stand at an inflection point. A public health agenda for social media research will serve as a compass to guide us toward social media becoming a powerful tool for the public good.

scholarly journals Lessons in Public Health Leadership

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
S Latif
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Public Health Systems ◽  
Health Leadership ◽  
Public Health Challenges ◽  
Competency Based ◽  
Systems Leadership ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Right ◽  
Public Health Leadership

Abstract Background The UK Faculty of Public Health (FPH) is a world leader in developing a dynamic competency-based curriculum and delivering high quality training and professional development of a multidisciplinary public health specialist workforce in the UK. This includes capacity building and shaping tomorrow's public health leaders. Objectives Strong Leadership is increasingly the need of the day to deal with the complex public health challenges in a rapidly evolving and shifting global landscape. Can a public health curriculum and training (like that of the FPH) provide the framework for the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours required for producing world class public health systems leaders? Body of the session Key principles of developing systems leadership include providing an enabling environment, developing the right skill mix, acquiring relevant knowledge, framing placements with experienced supervision and appropriate coaching and mentoring are some of the elements built into the training opportunities for public health registrars, their supervisors and new consultants. This presentation will give an overview of some lessons in public health leadership, the skills and knowledge base required to perform effectively as a public health systems leader and explore some of the challenges faced by the world of public health. The panel will encourage interactive discussion to share the learning from other countries and systems required to develop the next generation of public health leaders. Conclusions Public health, of all specialties, lends itself best to lead across and beyond organisational boundaries, lead without authority and create change whilst not being in charge. It is imperative that systems are put in place to train, develop and build public health leaders for tomorrow.

scholarly journals Ethical Issues in Social Media Research for Public Health

2018 ◽  
Vol 108 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth F. Hunter ◽  
Aisling Gough ◽  
Niamh O’Kane ◽  
Gary McKeown ◽  
Aine Fitzpatrick ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Media Research ◽  
Social Media Research

scholarly journals A Call for a Public Health Agenda for Social Media Research (Preprint)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherry Pagoto ◽  
Molly E Waring ◽  
Ran Xu
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Media Use ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Research ◽  
Social Media Research ◽  
Health And Well Being ◽  
Health Agenda

UNSTRUCTURED Research has revealed both the benefits and harms of social media use, but the public has very little guidance on how best to use social media to maximize the benefits to their health and well-being while minimizing the potential harms. Given that social media is intricately embedded in our lives, and we now have an entire generation of social media natives, the time has come for a public health research agenda to guide not only the public’s use of social media but also the design of social media platforms in ways that improve health and well-being. In this viewpoint we propose such a public health agenda for social media research that is framed around three broad questions: (1) How much social media use is unhealthy and what individual and contextual factors shape that relationship; (2) What are ways social media can be used to improve physical and mental well-being; and (3) How does health (mis)information spread, how does it shape attitudes, beliefs and behavior, and what policies or public health strategies are effective in disseminating legitimate health information while curbing the spread of health misinformation? We also discuss four key challenges that impede progress on this research agenda: negative sentiment about social media among the public and scientific community, a poorly regulated research landscape, poor access to social media data, and the lack of a cohesive academic field. Social media has revolutionized modern communication in ways that bring us closer to a global society, but we currently stand at an inflection point. A public health agenda for social media research will serve as a compass to guide us toward social media becoming a powerful tool for the public good.

scholarly journals ‘I feel the irritation and frustration all over the body’ Affective ambiguities in networked parenting culture

2021 ◽  
pp. 136787792110035
Author(s):  
Mari Lehto ◽  
Susanna Paasonen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Media Use ◽  
Research Data ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Media Use ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Media Research ◽  
Social Media Research ◽  
Study Participants

This article investigates the affective power of social media by analysing everyday encounters with parenting content among mothers. Drawing on data composed of diaries of social media use and follow-up interviews with six women, we ask how our study participants make sense of their experiences of parenting content and the affective intensities connected to it. Despite the negativity involved in reading and participating in parenting discussions, the participants find themselves wanting to maintain the very connections that irritate them, or even evoke a sense of failure, as these also yield pleasure, joy and recognition. We suggest that the ambiguities addressed in our research data speak of something broader than the specific experiences of the women in question. We argue that they point to the necessity of focusing on, and working through affective ambiguity in social media research in order to gain fuller understanding the complex appeal of platforms and exchanges.

Maternal health services in China’s western rural areas: uptake and correlates

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chengfang Liu ◽  
Linxiu Zhang ◽  
Yaojiang Shi ◽  
Huan ZHOU ◽  
Alexis Medina ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Maternal Health ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Uptake Rate ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Maternal Health Services ◽  
Western China ◽  
Public Health Systems

Purpose Many public health systems have struggled with the dual questions of (1) why the uptake rate of maternal health services is low among some subpopulations; and (2) how to raise it. The objective of this study is to assess the uptake rate of a new set of maternal health services in poor rural areas of China. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based on the survey responses of women’s representatives and village cadres from almost 1000 villages in June 2012 as part of a wide-scale public health survey in Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan provinces in the western part of China. Findings We find that the uptake rate of maternal health services (including in-hospital delivery, antenatal care visits and post-partum care visits) in poor rural areas of western China are far below average in China, and that the rates vary across provinces and ethnic groups. Our analyses demonstrate that distance, income, ethnicity and availability appear to be systematically correlated with low uptake rates of all maternal health services. Demand-side factors seem to be by far the most important sources of the differences between subpopulations. We also find that there is potential for creating a Conditional Cash Transfer program to improve the usage of maternal health services. Originality/value We believe that our results will contribute positively to the exploration of answers to the dual questions that many public health systems have struggled with (1) why the uptake rate of maternal health services is low among some subpopulations; and (2) how to raise it.

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