I vetoviolence: Using social media to change the violence prevention conversation

Background/Purpose: Violence is a serious public health problem in the United States. On average, 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner – that's more than 12 million women and men. The power of social media for violence prevention is the ability to move beyond information dissemination towards engagement in the conversation.

Methods: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Injury Center's Division of Violence Prevention (DVP) launched the VetoViolence Facebook page in December 2010, and it's currently the fifth largest CDC Facebook page with nearly 17,000 fans. CDC uses this outlet to share resources, start conversations, and highlight other violence prevention organizations, while gathering feedback from the growing community. With daily community interaction, it's clear the page is filling a need in the social space.

Results/Outcomes: Since September 2012, we've implemented new content strategies resulting in increased fans, likes, comments and shares and learned which content drives engagement. We're analyzing change over time and generating measurable results that can be applied to other public health campaigns.

Conclusions: This presentation will look at the changes in conversation that have taken place on the page during the year and will discuss how the results/outcomes of the past year's will inform future efforts, and what these outcomes can mean for the public health space. It will also look at how these initiatives informed messaging, identified audiences, and affected levels of interaction among fans.