Social Media as a Tool to Increase the Impact of Public Health Research

Roughly 69% of US adults use at least one kind of social media, with similar rates across racial and ethnic groups and rates near 90% for adults younger than 30 years.1 Professional organizations, public health agencies (e.g., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] and the World Health Organization), and hospitals routinely use social media for science and health messaging. Disseminate Public Health Research Posting links to scientific articles or media pieces on social media can expand readership to a wider audience; for example, three tweets about a Cochrane review increased hits to its webpage threefold, and readers linking to the Web page via Twitter spent threefold more time on the page than those arriving from other sources.3 Another study comparing views oftwo journal articles and a blog post summarizing the articles showed that the blog post was viewed approximately 30 000 times, which equated to more than 10 times as many views as either journal article.4 Although these findings are impressive, the reach of work shared on social media will depend on the size of the sharer's audience (i.e., number of followers). Influence Poiicy Social media provides a way to share evidence for or against health policies with the public, policymakers, and other key stakeholders. Because politicians are motivated to please their constituents, using social media to educate constituents about proposed policies and encouraging them to contact political representatives to voice opinions can affect politicians' actions. Aid Public Health Research Social media can be used for numerous research purposes, including surveillance activities and behavioral interventions.6,7 Given social media's ubiquitous use, lack of geographic barriers, and equal representation of traditionally underserved populations, study recruitment through social media has the potential to produce more representative study samples.