Social Media Use among State Health Departments

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      Social media is defined as activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational media. There are multiple types of social media today such as Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Google+,etc and this article examined the extent to which state public health departments (SHDs) are using social media, which social media applications are used most often, and how often social media is used interactively to engage audiences. Interestingly, it was found 65% of all state health departments across the US use at least one form of social media! Of these SHD's 86% used Twitter, 56% Facebook, and 43% a You tube channel.  Unfortunately, however, these health departments made on average one post a day to distribute information on disease prevention and staying healthy. Little attempt was made to involve the audience and the SHD had few friends or followers.
    While utilizing social media in a public health setting is an excellent idea, if the community is not drawn to the webpage the message is ineffective. As future dietitians, we should express to employers our generation is comfortable using social media and can effectively engage the community in nutrition messages. Most public health handouts are written at a 6-8 grade reading level, so many clients utilizing SHD services probably aren't consulting confusing evidence based sources for nutrition or health related information. As a result, we as practitioners need to transfer evidence based information on to social media sites in a fun and incentivizing format for clients that draw them in to our practice.



http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2458-12-242.pdf
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EK

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