Amelia Burke*, Westat, Rockville, United States Track: Practice Presentation Topic: Web 2.0 approaches for behaviour change, public health and biosurveillance Presentation Type: Oral presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School Room: A-Pechet Room Date: 2012-09-15 02:00 PM – 02:45 PM Last modified: 2012-09-12

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Public health communicators consistently find it hard to show that any type of communication intervention really results in an individual’s changed behavior. In most cases, intermediate outcomes are used to show progress along a continuum with the anticipation being that these intermediary steps will lead to the longer-term behavior changes. Digital and social media, as a newer medium, with its opportunities for engagement and real-time data collection, helps bridge this.
Yet, while digital and social media provide platforms that go beyond exposure and awareness, they still present a challenge to public health communicators who struggle to use the medium to effect and measure behavior change. Viral memes like “Is Ryan Gosling Cuter than a Puppy” and "LOLCats" tap into our obsession with celebrity and provide entertainment and humor - but when social media consumers show preferences for these kinds of online phenomena, how can a public health behavior change campaign compete?
CDC’s 2011-2012 National Influenza Vaccination Campaign addressed these challenges by implementing an innovative social media program with MeetUp.com, an online social networking website where people with similar interests organize themselves online but meet up offline, to find the campaign’s at-risk audiences and encourage these groups to share flu vaccination messages and get vaccinated together.
Ultimately, this program reached more than 10,000 people, resulted in 17 groups that got vaccinated together, and drive a total of 302 people to get vaccinated. In addition, the use of correlating online surveys provided data that showed a 12% increase in intention to get vaccinated and a 28% decrease in negative attitudes towards vaccination.
Thus, by working with a social media platform where offline actions are a natural part of the way users participate, increasing the number of people vaccinated became a tangible goal for the campaign. This is powerful for public health practitioners who need to deliver certain project outcomes and justify budgets as it shows a direct correlation between media spend and an impact on key determinants of behavior.
This presentation will look at the overall program, how it was selected to match the communication preferences of the distinct target audiences, the online measures that were used to evaluate the effort, and the results.