250362 Diffusion of social media in public health and health care reform: Intrinsic characteristics of best practices

Monday, October 31, 2011

Steven Godin, PhD, MPH, PHI Certificate , Department of Health Studies, East Stroudsburg University, East Stroudsburg, PA
Pragati Jain, MPH , Department of Health Studies, East Stroudsburg University, East Stroudsburg, PA
The adoption of Web 2.0 social media is gaining rapid momentum in public health practice with over 1,200 social network patent applications submitted in the informatics industry in 2010. This presentation explores Roger's five characteristics (i.e., relative advantage; compatibility; complexity vs. simplicity; trialability; and observability) of best practices within the common social media venues (i.e., blogs, micro-blogging, twitter, social networking, wikis, and virtual worlds, to name a few) used in public health practice. While the field is experiencing rapid diffusion of these innovations, barriers include critical ethical dilemmas that continue to plague further adoption of these technologies. Current trends in social media within health care reform include engaging and educating e-patients, convergence of social media with electronic health records, virtual support and online communities, and social media for health care providers. The authors provide quality assurance recommendations to ensure the integrity of social media approaches in public health practice.

Learning Areas:
Administer health education strategies, interventions and programs
Communication and informatics
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs

Learning Objectives:
1) To describe Rogers five characteristics of Web 2.0 social media tools that lead to health consumer adoption; 2) To identify the benefits and potential ethical dilemmas associated with using social media based interventions; and 3) To identify future trends of social media use in health care reform.

Keywords: Public Health Informatics, Health Care Reform

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am a professor who teaches public health informatics at the graduate level. I possess a graduate degree in public health informatics, and have over ten years experience working in consumer health informatics.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.