Popular social media sites have millions of registered users (Facebook, over 800 million; Twitter, over 500 million; WordPress, over 15 million), many of whom log in daily to share intimate details of their lives, including symptoms, illnesses and struggles with chronic diseases. This is a treasure trove of informal data available for research and monitoring of public health issues. While tapping this resource raises many ethical issues, particularly individual identification, initial research has demonstrated that it may help with disease surveillance.

St Louis and Zorlu offer the following examples:

• Recent analysis of three million tweets from May – December 2009 showed that “the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak could have been identified on Twitter one week before it emerged in official records from general practitioner reports”
• Physicians, unable to reach patients with chronic conditions after the tsunami in Japan in March 2011, turned to Twitter and the mobile Internet to direct patients to sources for their medications.
• Digital surveillance platforms such as BioCaster and HealthMap regularly search and extract information from news, social media and other sites looking for hints and clues of new public health threats.

While these examples are compelling, and collaborations between HealthMap and public health agencies are underway to track influenza and other public health challenges, Twitter cannot replace traditional methods of tracking and verifying diseases. How many times have you or someone you know attributed symptoms to one illness, only to find it was a different illness? Monitoring must be coupled with verification, else we risk spreading rumor and panic.

Do you use Twitter or other social media to talk about your health concerns and conditions? How do you feel about having this information monitored for the good of many? Tell us!

References:

St Louis, C., & Zorlu, G. (2012). Can Twitter predict disease outbreaks? BMJ, 344, e2353. doi: 10.1136/bmj.e2353

Szomszor, M., Kostkova, P., & De Quincey, E. (2012). Swineflu: Twitter predicts swine flu oubreak in 2009.

Tamura, Y., & Fukuda, K. (2011). Earthquake in Japan. Lancet, 377(9778), 1652. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(11)60672-7

Health literacy is the ability to get information, understand it, and use information to lower risk and better health.

In addition, this site posted a YouTube video from Harvard School of Public Health’s Dr. Rima Rudd, Senior Lecturer on Society, Human Development, and Health. In it, she talks about the “Perspective” article she wrote for the New England Journal of Medicine on improving Americans’ health literacy.

Unfortunately, NEJM’s link to one of the sources cited in her paper is not working properly, namely, the report “Literacy & Health Outcomes” from AHRQ (the link to the left works). If only librarians had been consulted in the building of the Internet and World Wide Web…

…is being outpaced by most other developed countries when it comes to improvements in health outcomes, according to a new analysis by a researcher at the University Of Washington School Of Public Health. The researcher, Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, a senior lecturer in global health, says the decline comes despite increased U.S. spending on health care services.

In a published study titled “The Hurrider I Go the Behinder I Get: The Deteriorating International Ranking of U.S. Health Status,” Bezruchka looked at statistics on Infant and child mortality, maternal mortality, life expectancy at birth and at age 50, and adult mortality as mortality measures that reflect health over the course of one’s life, comparing them across developed countries. This study offers a succinct summary of its findings as follows:

1. Around 1950, the United States had among the best health outcomes measured by mortality indicators, but 60 years later, it ranked behind the other rich countries and a number of poorer ones.
2. The differences in mortality outcomes between the United States and the healthiest nations today represent substantial inequalities in health.
3. Reasons for this relative decline are likely due to structural changes related to societal determinants of population health stemming from high economic inequality and lack of attention to early life issues.
4. Public awareness of deteriorating health rankings in the United States is limited, so the next steps to improving health require major communication strategies.

Why do you think we have fallen so far behind in health outcomes compared to the rest of the developed world? What can or should we do to change it? Tell us!

Interdisciplinary teams of graduate or undergraduate students can win a portion of $18,000 in prize money for creating ”effective, innovative apps that take on the nation’s pressing health issues” utilizing existing DHHS health data to “engage and empower people in ways that lead to better health:”

The Challenge

With an abundance of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) data and other health data available as part of the Health Data Initiative (HDI), students have an unprecedented opportunity to create interactive apps and other tools that engage and empower people in ways that lead to better health. Working in interdisciplinary teams that meld technological skills with health knowledge, the IOM and NAE believe that college students can generate exciting and powerful new products – the next “viral” apps – to improve health for communities and individuals.

To “Go Viral To Improve Health”:

• Identify a health problem in your college’s surrounding community
• Assemble an interdisciplinary student team
• Develop an app using data from the HHS Health Indicators Warehouse and other data sources
• Demonstrate how your solution will engage people in your community to promote action that will improve their health

Details are available at the Institute of Medicine website, and groups wishing to promote this challenge can download and print a flyer.

If you were part of such a team, what would you design? How would you use an app to address a pressing community health problem? Tell us!

Fortunately for the newspaper’s readers, the journalist goes on to include a response from Geni Alexander, public information officer for the Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services, who said, “We would be very careful basing” programs “strictly off that study” because it makes the case for technology that TeleVox sells. The article goes on to cite other quality resources that support some of the study’s findings while not endorsing the TeleVox healthcare product line, which includes automated messaging systems, website hosting, and other tools “not just stay in touch but actually engage their patients while saving money in the process” (from the company website).

Health sciences libraries are in the business of helping patrons find evidence-based health and medical information. Here at Eccles Library, we can point you to quality information resources — websites, journals and more — on everything from health statistics, to personal/consumer health, to sites that address rumors and hoaxes on the Web. Got a question? Just ask!