Improving Health Promotion Through the Integration of Technology, Crowdsourcing, and Social Media

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric J. Conrad ◽  
Mikaela Becker ◽  
Brent Powell ◽  
Kelly Corrine Hall
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Health Promotion ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Intervention Development ◽  
Internet Communication ◽  
Integration Of Technology ◽  
Media And Technology ◽  
Relief Efforts ◽  
Health Promotion Practice

As Internet accessibility and technological innovations continue to increase communication, new opportunities have emerged to leverage these tools to improve health promotion practice. Advances and utilization of collaborative Internet communication, or social media, have provided global connectivity on an unprecedented scale. Using these innovations to leverage the collective intellect of online communities for specific goals, crowdsourcing is an approach that has the potential to solve complex public health problems. Due to the novelty of crowdsourcing implementations and the relative infancy of its application within public health, it is necessary to examine examples to facilitate practitioner conceptualization and application. This article details the development and application of a crowdsourced effort leveraging social media and technology to assist in relief efforts during Hurricane Harvey. Furthermore, the article presents examples corresponding to a typology of crowdsourcing for public health, including Knowledge Discovery and Management, Distributed Human Intelligence Tasking, Broadcast Search, and Peer-Vetted Creative Production problems. Leveraging these innovative applications has positive implications for health promotion practice, including improved intervention development and evaluation, increased multidisciplinary collaboration, and enhanced facilitation of communication, information exchange, and support.

Instagramming our way through public health communication: why and who is using it?

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
R Vareda ◽  
T Garcia ◽  
J Rachadell
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Health Promotion ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Communicable Diseases ◽  
Healthy Lifestyles ◽  
Communication Tool ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Non Communicable Diseases

Abstract Background From disease prevention to health promotion, communication is key for Public Health (PH) practice and, according to the 9th Essential Public Health Operation its goal is to improve populations health literacy and capacity to access, understand and use information. Though social media is frequently presented as a potentially useful tool for PH communication, there is a lack of evidence about its effectiveness and impact on PH outcomes. This study researches Instagram® as a PH tool and aims to know who is using it, what content is shared on the platform and how much engagement there is. Methods This cross-sectional study regards information on 1000 Instagram® posts with the hashtags publichealth, publichealthpromotion, healthpromotion, publichealthmatters and publichealtheducation. Authors categorized post content and creators, and reviewed the number of likes and comments per post to determine engagement. Data analysis was performed on IBM SPSS® Statistics. Results The most common content categories were communicable diseases (n = 383), non-communicable diseases (n = 258) and healthy lifestyles (n = 143). Health professionals post more about communicable diseases (43,6%) and non-professionals about healthy lifestyles (36,1%). Non-professionals (n = 191) post about PH issues almost as much as health professionals (n = 220) and PH associations (n = 201). Most don't reference their sources (n = 821). Posts on communicable diseases have the most likes and comments per post (mean of 172 likes and 3,1 comments). Conclusions Half the Instagram® posts analysed in this study were made by health professionals or organizations. Communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases and healthy lifestyles were the most frequent content categories and had the most engagement. The majority of posts didn't reference their sources. Though Instagram® seems to be a potential PH communication tool, further research is needed to confirm its benefits for PH. Key messages Social media platforms like Instagram® are potentially powerful tools for PH communication. There is a need to understand the efficacy of social media as health promotion tools.

scholarly journals Toward a Culture of Health in the United States: Introducing the HPP Arts in Public Health Supplement

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 5S-7S
Author(s):  
Jill Sonke ◽  
Lourdes Rodríguez ◽  
Melissa A. Valerio-Shewmaker
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Health Promotion ◽  
Public Health Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
The University ◽  
Critical Public Health ◽  
Health Promotion Practice

The arts—and the arts and culture sector—offer fertile ground for achieving a culture of health in the United States. The arts and artists are agents of change and can help enable this vision and also address the most critical public health issues we are contending with, including COVID-19 and racism. The arts provide means for engaging dialogue, influencing behaviors, disrupting paradigms and fueling social movements. The arts uncover and illuminate issues. They engage us emotionally and intellectually. They challenge assumptions. They call out injustice. They drive collective action. They heal—making arts + public health collaboration very relevant in this historic moment. In this special Health Promotion Practice supplement on arts in public health, you’ll find powerful examples and evidence of how cross-sector collaboration between public health and the arts can advance health promotion goals and impacts, and make health promotion programs not only more accessible to diverse populations but also more equitable and effective in addressing the upstream systems, policies, and structures that create health disparities. You will see how the arts can empower health communication, support health literacy, provide direct and measurable health benefits to individuals and communities, and support coping and resilience in response to COVID-19. This issue itself exemplifies cross-sector collaboration, as it was created through partnership between Health Promotion Practice, the Society for Public Health Education, ArtPlace America, and the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine, and presents voices from across the public health, arts, and community development sectors.

Online Opinion Leaders in the Health Promotion Digital Era

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 295-309
Author(s):  
Joyce Cheah Lynn-Sze ◽  
◽  
Azlina Kamaruddin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Health Promotion ◽  
Health Communication ◽  
Opinion Leader ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Opinion Leaders ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Public

Health opinion leaders have widely embraced social media for health promotion and public health communication which can make a strong influence on the public decision making. However, despite the growing relevance of public health threats such as infectious diseases, pandemic influenza and natural disasters, research has paid little attention to the qualities of opinion leaders. Moreover, there is limited evidence that public health organisations use social media appropriately to engage in meaningful conversations with audiences. Thus, the aims of the study are to describe principles of communication practised by online opinion leaders to promote health issues, to discuss the strategies of social media used, to explain the opinion leaders’ influence attributes in health decision making and finally to develop a model of online opinion leader in the contemporary health promotion era. Content analysis was conducted on Facebook postings of five selected health opinion leaders. In addition, semi-structured interviews with 10 followers were conducted. The findings of the study revealed that there are three principles of communication practised by online opinion leaders, which are language, interaction and themes. There are three strategies opinion leaders use to influence the public: social connectivity, social support and social consultation. Furthermore, there are five opinion leaders’ attributes that influence the public’s decision making, namely personality, authenticity, trust/credibility, professional knowledge and social position. The model would be beneficial in educating and guiding the current public health opinion leaders in order to establish health and social well-being. Keywords: Online opinion leader, online health communication, public health, two-step flow theory, decision making.

The European Schools of Public Health: From theory to practice - two sides of a broken coin

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
V Bjegovic-Mikanovic
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Health Promotion ◽  
Disease Prevention ◽  
European Region ◽  
Schools Of Public Health ◽  
Healthy Nutrition ◽  
Prevention And Health Promotion ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Two Sides

Abstract Introduction Disease prevention and health promotion are closely related through the lifestyle concept and should be part of the postgraduate curriculum of every School of Public Health (SPH) in the European Region and beyond, especially concerning the modifiable behaviors of physical activity and healthy nutrition. Methods The Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER) executed 2 surveys on the activities of its members between 2011 and 2015/16. A group of 48 SPH responded in both surveys. The performance of graduates was measured by a Likert scale of 1-5, applied to the 10 Essential Public Health Operations (EPHOs). Furthermore, we determined the delay in full implementation for the target year 2030. The target to offer both modules in 2030 has been set at 100% of all SPHs. Results For disease prevention as for health promotion, the 2nd Survey in 2015/16 shows slightly less positive results offering these two modules (72.9 vs. 77.1 and 81.3 v. 87.5%) as compared to the 1st Survey in 2011. The only exception is the use of social media which - as a method of teaching and training - increased for disease prevention from 20.8 to 37.5% of all SPH and for health promotion from 22.9 to 39.6%. Referring to the set target of 100% for running these two modules, considerable delays between 4 and 13.5 years accumulate for the target year 2030. Conclusions Except for the use of social media, progress towards 2030 is slow or even negative. Serious efforts have to be made by ASPHER to reverse this lack of progress.

Critical Narrative Intervention for Health Equity Research and Practice: Editorial Commentary Introducing the Health Promotion Practice Critical Narrative Intervention Special Collection

2021 ◽  
pp. 152483992110461
Author(s):  
Alice Fiddian-Green ◽  
Aline Gubrium
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Promotion ◽  
Health Equity ◽  
People Living With Hiv ◽  
Narrative Intervention ◽  
Equity Research ◽  
Special Collection ◽  
Health Equity Research ◽  
Critical Public Health ◽  
Health Promotion Practice

This special collection of Health Promotion Practice introduces critical narrative intervention (CNI) as a key theoretical framing for an asset-based, narrative, and participatory approach to promoting health and addressing social inequality. Innovative digital and visual methodologies highlighted in this special collection—comics and graphic novels, cellphilms and other participatory film, story booths, digital storytelling, and photovoice—are changing the way critical public health researchers and practitioners forge new knowledge, creating new possibilities for interdisciplinary and activist-based inquiry. Public health research and engagement efforts that critically contend with historically repressive structures and intervene through narrative and participatory processes to enact change with and for disenfranchised communities are long overdue. This special collection showcases six CNI projects that promote equity and justice in the context of LGBTQ, nonbinary, and other gender-diverse young people; people who inject drugs living with hepatitis C virus; young women who trade sex; undocumented and formerly undocumented immigrants; and people living with HIV/AIDS. It is our intent that this collection of exemplars can serve as a guidepost for practitioners and researchers interested in expanding the scope of critical public health praxis. Individually and collectively, the special collection illustrates how CNI can create space for the increased representation of historically silenced populations, redress stigma, and provoke important questions to guide a new era of health equity research.

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