Nilmini Sunethra Wickramasinghe*, RMIT University, Australia and Epworth HealthCare, Melbourne, Australia Carolin Durst, University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Nurenburg, Germany Janine Viol, University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Nurenburg, Germany Track: Research Presentation Topic: The nature and dynamics of social networks in health Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2013-09-25

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Background
The confluence of two key trends namely: 1) Consumer health informatics (CHI), which is arguably the most rapidly expanding area within medical informatics and is playing a key role in paving the way for healthcare delivery in today’s 21st century and 2) Obesity, which has become an issue of grave global concern as there exist more than one billion overweight adults out of which at least 300 million of them are medically obese appears to hold the key to addressing a key healthcare dilemma in today’s 21st Century.
The causes of obesity are multifaceted and result from a convergence of several factors. Changes in individual behaviours leading to an increased intake of high-caloric foods and a decrease of physical activity are suggested to be a key contributor to the global obesity epidemic and are frequently triggered by social aspects. Social networks have been identified as one of the most important dimensions of people's social environment that may enable or constrain the adoption of health-promoting behaviours. Given that online social networks are becoming more important and based on evidence of studies focusing on the relationship between offline social networks and health-related behaviours, we propose that online social networks might have the same impact on individuals. If true and given the large growth of such online social networks, a solution to address the current obesity may be possible.
Objective
Specifically, this study examines the role of online social networks in facilitating healthy behaviours and lifestyles to ensue. This is done through a cross country study conducted simultaneously in Australia and Germany funded by an ATN-DAAD grant.
Methods
Adopting a mixed methodology, our research aims to examine a pervasive online social network containing personal online social network data, as well as information on an individual’s health-related behaviours. Thus, we chose to use data from the most popular social network site Facebook and developed the Facebook application “Calorie Cruncher” to support our data collection. The requirements for this application were derived through qualitative interviews focusing on issues of “real life” that led to weight gain / weight loss. The quantitative aspects of the study focused on network ties, network structure and network members and how individuals are embedded in their online social network.
Results
Key findings regarding the (1) causes and influencing factors for the interviewees’ weight gain, (2) aspects of the interviewees’ social environment keeping up the motivation to lose weight as well as the (3) connection between Facebook and health-related behaviours were obtained. These findings served to also inform the design implications for the Facebook application.
Conclusions
Online health communities provide social support and informational support. We have applied these recognised traits to the context of obesity and examined the possibility of using online social networks to facilitate healthy behaviours as a way to address the current obesity epidemic. Our results to date from Australia and Germany are encouraging and have served to provide proof of concept. Now, we plan to continue with larger follow up studies.