When it comes to reaching the public with important health messages, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found it's best to go to the people - not to wait for them to come to you.
According to Scott Mullins, technical team leader for the CDC's Division of eHealth Marketing, government officials are grappling with ways to best provide outreach in the changing landscape of America's technological world.
"Our overriding consideration with social media is that people want and need information in the context of their experience on the internet. We can't expect everybody to come to the CDC website for us to get our guidance out," he said.
According to Mullins, the average healthcare consumer is becoming more sophisticated. There are more expert consumers, or "prosumers," and people managing their own healthcare who go to a variety of sites for their information.
The CDC wants to provide information in the format consumers are using online. "The information flows from our Web sites out onto these other websites," Mullins said. "We're very much approaching it that way."
Mullins said the CDC is the first federal healthcare agency to use social media, and that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Environmental Protection Agency are already using it. The Department of Health and Human Services will partner with the CDC to explore possibilities for its use.
Mullins attributes the CDC's early use of social media to its highly trusted brand among the public, making it easier to partner with other organizations on the Web.
The CDC's use of social media has so far included virtual worlds, podcasts, RSS feeds, Facebook, MySpace, widgits, chats and eCards. Electronic greeting cards, or eCards, have been adapted by CDC for sending health messages rather than birthday greetings and typical eCard messages. A friendly reminder from a trusted source to get cancer screenings, for example, is much more effective than a public service announcement, and people can find eCards online alongside Web sites that address particular health topics.
"It doesn't make sense for us to have a site for this when there are sites already out there that have large constituencies around various healthcare topics," Mullins said.
This Valentine's Day, the CDC reported, 6,000 of its e-Cards were sent with health messages.
Over the past couple years, the CDC has partnered successfully with a popular virtual world called Whyville for youths aged 12-14 to present messages on seasonal flu. In 2007, some 41,000 visitors to the site had their avatars vaccinated against the fictitious Why flu in the virtual world, including a surprising 1,800 seniors who play the game online with their grandchildren. Through the use of Whyville, CDC officials had an opportunity to teach both young teens and seniors about the importance of flu vaccinations and piqued interest in other CDC prevention topics, Mullins said.
The CDC has a pilot HIV/AIDs prevention campaign that uses videos made by college students sent via cell phones to friends. The agency is exploring using the same type of cell phone videos for smoking cessation, according to Mullins.
The CDC is just getting started.
"We're getting our toes wet" with social media, Mullins said. The agency plans to expand its reach of social media and share what it learns with HHS and other federal agencies.
At a workgroup meeting last month of the American Health Information Community, federal officials and stakeholders explored the possible use of social media to promote personal health records. Jay Bernhardt, director of the CDC's National Center for Health Marketing, said any kind of federal push to promote the dissemination and uptake of PHRs will likely take the use of social media. Consumers respond best to messages from trusted peer sources rather than from authoritarian information from the top down, he said.
Janice Nall, director of the CDC's e-Health Marketing Division, said, "The positive uses for social media are staggering when you start to think of the health implications."