To adequately answer this question, I am looking forward to spending the next 2 years collecting data and researching  Aboriginal use of media and its  associated tools amongst the youth, both in urban and remote communities (e.g. mobile phones, computers, tablets, TV, radio, print media). However, let me give you a simple snapshot of what is out there in the Top End of the Northern Territory.

Content still matters

At the local IGA store in community X for example, young people would gather around the check out counter to look at pictures in the newspaper and sometimes if the pictures were attractive, they would ask a sales person to read the article for them. The same rule applies to other formats of media. Unfortunately we’re concerned about the digital divide when we haven’t yet found the secret sauce to creating engaging content in Indigenous Health.

Format matters next

In a community arts centre I visited, young people preferred to consume media in video format especially via YouTube. Media was also accessed through community computers whether at school or at other venues. Most communities have accessible Internet except for Groote Eylandt. The picture on the right shows the browser history on a computer in the arts centre for one day. As you can see, media content of choice is around Aboriginal music videos, cultural events and only one news report (see top of list). The same was observed in the other two computers.

Engagement and Marketing

The technology is available but none of the content on the three computers for the last 5 days has anything even closely related to health or well-being services. Simply put, young people are not engaged by the online health content or websites produced by Government. Some young people watch TV and a few may listen to the radio. Recall rates for the “No germs on me” video was high but sales of soap had no change whatsoever. By the way, while the ads are playing on TV, young people are busy chatting on Diva Chat via mobile phones. Rachel De Sain in her guest blog here says that we need to be ready to be invited into a conversation. But instead social marketing is simply barging in and humbugging.

Conclusion

The content that young people are looking for may superficially seem like your average Aboriginal music video but in reality they are looking for affirmation of Aboriginal pride. They are looking for local content that is relevant to them.

Technology can aid remote communities but it will only be an aid to public health when public health programs are able to involve the community in its process of creating content, involving health workers in creating resources and inviting elders to participate in writing policy.

How would you like technology to help in supporting community participation in remote communities? If you are an academic, have you thought about research dissemination to communities that is accessible anyplace, anytime? e.g. YouTube videos?

See also

1. The evolution of Health Promotion professionals

A simple table showing the number of health and well being social media profiles/accounts by state/territory. Departments of Child Protection, Consumer Disablity Services and Commissioner’s offices were excluded.

Some of the pages have more than 1000 likes or followers. However, only further qualitative analysis would answer the question of effectiveness and levels of authentic engagement. 1-3 pages had broken links and overall the information is succinct though an update for 2012 would be optimal. I’m not sure why I cant lock down social media profiles for Tasmania.

Please assist with adding more information here via the comments section?

mappa_blog (Photo credit: francescopozzi)

A search for active government blogs in Australia will lead you to an impressive list of 39 blogs listed on the Australia.gov.au site. Many government agencies are blogging, from the Aged Care Complaints Scheme News, to Share the Line. These are your trail blazers within the bureaucracy but only a small handful of these blogs represent the health sector. “Share the Line” is not really a blog and ‘Rural health – a life changing difference’ is a great blog but not for promoting health or for prevention. The Australian Medicine Industry blog  is probably the only voice from this healthcare ecosystem with relevant articles compared to the rest on the list.

“Share the Line”  is an awesome website much like an online news site/mental health 2.0 intervention/e-magazine, but would you consider calling it a blog?  ‘Rural health – a life changing difference‘ on the other hand is a well maintained and informative blog about the lives of medical doctors in rural and remote Australia.  This blog plainly put, aims to motivate and attract medical doctors to rural and remote locations. There isn’t really a discussion on the challenges and opportunities for healthcare improvement.

The Centre for Disease Control in the United States has been holding up the standards of online engagement, information sharing and social marketing through their social media presence especially their blog. The purpose of health blogs by government agencies is to enable greater access  to information about health services and maintaining health and well-being (indexed by Google/a search engine). Health blogging, if constructed with the principles of behavior design (Fogg, 2003), can enable health information seekers to translate their health seeking behavior online into tangible and measurable outcomes, offline ( to be elaborated on in a future post).

A risk that many government agencies prefer to avoid (than to courageously blog) is a nasty comment from someone anonymous about their staff, service or both. The Centre for Disease Control has a strict comment policy where one would have to turn in their email address before being able to post a comment. Even so, comments are all moderated prior to posting.  To cite an example from the news industry, both ABC News Watch and The New York Times, both with regularly controversial content, apply a common sense and explicit policy approach, without the sacrifice of readers having to spend minutes filling up a form. Unlike The Star online newspaper in Malaysia where one has to  give up their national ID number to be able to post a comment, explicit policies in simple language deter the potential abuser to acting up.

It would be great to see different agencies within the government health department keeping both staff and the public informed through creative writing and simple language, whilst being able to receive feedback/comments.

Sydney University - Medical School (Photo credit: State Records NSW)

Technology has made the lives of just about everyone easier. It’s made us more productive, faster at what we do, and more organized. Staying on top of everything as a med school student is, needless to say, difficult. Fortunately, there are a number of apps that will make your challenging, hectic life easier as a med student. Here are a few productivity and organization apps you should consider downloading, if you’re a medical student:

• Medscape Mobile (Android, Blackerry, iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone) – This free app, made by WebMD, is a database of thousands of reference articles on diseases, health conditions, surgical procedures, and drugs. About 1 in 2 medical doctors and 3 in 4 medical students use this app, according to the Medscape Mobile website. Using Medscape Mobile on a regular basis can definitely help you learn more about what you’ll need to know to give patients the best care in the future.

• MedCalc (iPhone, iPad Touch, and iPad) – For 99 cents, you can download this app and have instant access to all those complicated medical formulas that are so difficult to remember. MedCalc is super easy to use and even converts units for you and comes with comprehensive explanations of medical formulas.

• Evernote (Android, Blackberry, Windows, iPad, iPod Touch, and iPone) – This is a free app that all different kinds of students who need to do tons and tons of studying find useful. It allows you to take notes, take pictures, record lectures, and access all of the notes, pictures, and recorded lectures later. If you take a lot of notes and have a lot of details to remember, this app is invaluable.

• Day-Timer Plan2Go (Android, Windows, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) – This calendar app is a little on the expensive side ($7.99), but it’s one of the best out there. It syncs up with your email and Facebook accounts and lets you color code and prioritize events. Plus,you have the ability to choose from several different themes and customize the way your Day-Timer Plan2Go calendar looks. If you need some help planning your busy schedule and managing your time, you’ll love this app.

So, take advantage of the apps that will make your life easier as a med student. Being a med student is one of the most challenging things you’ll have to do. Let technology help you out!

Author’s Bio: Carolyn Knight is a guest blogger on the subjects of technology in education, medical
education, and RN schools.

Using Infodemiology

In the 2010 Medicine 2.0 Congress in Maastricht, the attendees were given a presentation by Dr. Gunther Eysenbach on Infodemiology and Infoveillance. In his article published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research 2009, Eysenbach defines Infodemiology as the “science of distribution and determinants of information in an electronic medium, specifically the Internet, or in a population, with the ultimate aim to inform public health and public policy”. Eysenbach goes on to explain by giving examples for Infodemiology applications which include: “the analysis of queries from Internet search engines to predict disease outbreaks (eg. influenza); monitoring peoples’ status updates on microblogs such as Twitter for syndromic surveillance; detecting and quantifying disparities in health information availability; identifying and monitoring of public health relevant publications on the Internet (eg. anti-vaccination sites, but also news articles or expert-curated outbreak reports); automated tools to measure information diffusion and knowledge translation, and tracking the effectiveness of health marketing campaigns. Moreover, analyzing how people search and navigate the Internet for health-related information, as well as how they communicate and share this information, can provide valuable insights into health-related behavior of populations”.

Developing tools for Infoveillance

Here are a couple of examples of innovation and community empowerment working together:

In December 2011, a suicide prevention app called “Guard Your Buddy” was launched to provide ‘soldiers with an immediate support network in times of need through a variety of strategies’. The article was written by Jenny Wilson for Smart Planet (@jennydwilson). It allows members of the Tennessee National Guard to connect with others in their community, and also offers professional psychological counseling 24 hours a day. Through the use of good policy writing, beginning January 1, all members of the Tennessee National Guard will be required to carry a card with the web site and app information whenever they are on duty. Another example is an app available in the iTunes store called ‘ASK and Prevent Suicide‘ by Mental Health of America of Texas.

In order for alert systems for health service providers to be developed to pick up ‘calls for help’ on a large scale, their understanding and acceptance of Infodemiology needs to be established first. But how far are we from utilizing these tools, when there are still public health practitioners and service providers who categorize social media as a tool for broadcasting what one just had for breakfast?

Reference

Eysenbach G. Infodemiology and Infoveillance: Framework for an Emerging Set of Public Health Informatics Methods to Analyze Search, Communication and Publication Behavior on the Internet . J Med Internet Research 2009 11(1):e11

Image by GDS Infographics via Flickr

At Youth Health 2.0, I am passionate about how tools and messages are designed to inspire young people towards better health outcomes. This blog post is about us leaving something behind when we die so that someone else, whom we do not know will have a better outcome.

The FilmLife Project is dedicated to increasing awareness around organ donation in conjunction with Donate Life Week 2012 (19-26 Feb). On the 21, 22 and 28 of January a free FilmLife workshop worth $3000 will be held. Sign up, get trained  and enjoy the journey. For more information please see here.

If you’re blogger  and would like to take up the FilmLife Blogger Challenge head to this website here.

As for me, I am going to answer these 2 question:

 1. What’s your take on or experience with organ donation, and why did you choose to take part in the FilmLife Blogger Challenge?

I have no ‘attachment’ to my organs and am looking forward to the day when I can make a difference in someone’s life. Of course one will never know when their time is up but, to make such a precious gift to a stranger is a privilege.

2. If you were to donate your organs, which one would you love to donate, and why?

I would donate everything. Why? Where I’m going I wont be needing them. It is as if a newborn baby is hanging on for dear life to their umbilical cord and placenta when it is time to use their other faculties and organs.

3. Who in your family would you need to talk to about organ donation, to be sure your loved ones knew your wishes?

My wife and our children will be together on this one and see it come through.

Image via Wikipedia

The first impression

On the 18th of November 2010, I first posted a brief overview of what I knew about Diva Chat then. I discussed the pros and cons of this tool, with many health professionals and a few top researchers in the country on HIV/AIDS and sexual health. None of them had heard of Diva Chat and didn’t seem that interested. I was troubled by their lack of curiosity when questions like mine were being ignored because they were technology and social media related.

Then in July 2011, through a guest blog by Rachel De Sain (@rdesain), the Director of Flaxworks, we raised the subject of Diva Chat again, hoping to create a greater awareness amongst policy makers and researchers, based on her observations around youth online communications in Cape York. She said,

‘Diva Chat was widely known and used by many of the youth community. There were mixed reactions by older community members as to the effectiveness of this as a communication tool for youth, particularly police and some health workers who stated that they hated the service, they felt that it led to a lot of bullying and had acted as an ignition to an already fragile community where multiple families/clans have been displaced, have little to do and as such fights erupt easily.‘

My other source of information on Diva Chat is a contact who lives in a remote community and prefers to remain anonymous. The information provided through our discourse is credible and unbiased.

ABC News and The Herald Sun

Now, Diva Chat has been picked up by traditional media. The ABC Radio in Darwin, presented Diva Chat in context based on interviews with myself and a few other key informants. I stressed that whilst Telstra is providing a service that is being utilized by Indigenous youth in remote communities, it cannot monitor the way the service is being used adequately because it was not designed to operate like Facebook. The bullying that happens online is a clear amplification of attitudes and behavior that is born and fueled in real life.

This is our opportunity to increase our efforts in understanding Indigenous youth and their relationship to online communications and build/provide a service that is adequate whilst promoting a safe environment. Facebook has evolved to provide such a service through its ‘report abuse’ and ‘block’ features. Maybe Indigenous youth should be encouraged to switch to Facebook? Should Telstra provide services that promote a safe environment? To what extent should the responsibility lie with a telecommunications provider?

The following week after the ABC article on Diva Chat was aired nationwide, The Herald Sun published an article entitled ‘Indigenous leaders want to ban or censor social media including Facebook’. This information brought much concern to me as this proved that there is very little awareness around what social media is built for and how it can be harnessed for social good.

In my TEDxDarwin talk last year in August, I said ‘…social media functions like a typical Indigenous community’. I said this because Indigenous communities, whether in Australia or beyond our region, are known for their collective values of sharing and collaboration, which is the essence of social media. Because there is such poor levels of engagement and education on social media and technology for Indigenous communities in remote Australia, social media is being used in a damaging way and the positive potential is not being maximised. I wish the NT Mojo (NT Mobile Journalist) project has just as much traditional media hype as the Diva Chat story. This project is the embryonic reflection of Indigenous control over their online space in the future, but we should try to make it happen today. There is no time to lose.

2. Is technology to blame in cybersafety?

3. Stanford Medicine 2.0 Conference 2011 – The Report Card (Guest blog by Prajesh C)

4. iPhone Apps for STI/HIV Prevention

5. Mark Scott (ABC) on social media leadership

6. Social media and Indigenous culture

7. Youth Health 2011 Sydney conference presentation

8. Sexual health iPhone Apps

9. Wanted: a Social Media Expert?! (Guest Blog by Kate Nelson)

10. A simple QR code evaluation

“Australia’s love affair with social networking continues to strengthen with one in four of our customers regularly using their mobiles to access Facebook,” Rebekah said. “Gen Y is leading the charge and armed with their mobile phones using new technologies and applications to make their mark on the world.”

Although it has been almost a year since Telstra posted this on their website, I doubt the scenario has changed dramatically. What this means to researchers especially in health, is that they now have a tool that they can use to engage their target group or wider community in order to convey their findings in a more accessible manner. Heidi Allen a blogger with over 15 years experience in the publishing and health industry has published an informative article entitled “Sharing research via social media by pain focused and general medicine journals“. From a study that she shared at the Australian Pain Society Conference, Heidi concluded that the “top general medical journals already use social media to disseminate their content”.

Despite the lack of conclusive evidence of  the effectiveness of sharing clinical practice or other research findings via social media, there is no doubt that researchers have always been faced with the task of disseminating information in a simple, cost-effective and engaging way. The only way to find out is to venture, explore and find your own experiences in using social media.

The landscape and communities in the Northern Territory (N.T.) differ greatly from the rest of Australia. Here are 5 reasons why social media can be considered as a tool for engagement and information sharing by researchers and their institutions in the N.T.:

1. In remote communities literacy and language barriers can be overcome through the use of video blogs. The use of visual based information that is accessible via tablet, mobile phones and computers can make the process of conveying information less daunting, taking into consideration cultural  and gender sensitivities. There are already communities with 3G mobile connection and with the National Broadband Network roll out, the excuse of internet unavailability or mobile connection are no longer applicable.

2. According to local market research (Creative Territory) and an article from the Rite Series, the number of “Facebook users identifying as Territorians is approximately 69, 000 of which 50,000 reside in Darwin”. This rough estimate still proves a large enough community that can be engaged for researchers working with urban and rural communities especially youth and young adults.

3. By using social media, researchers can get a sense of what the research needs of the community are. Through well designed marketing and engagement strategies researchers can bring together a larger sample of opinions and ideas. This is called ‘crowdsourcing‘. Here is a video called ‘What is Crowdsourcing?’

4. Publishing research findings in peer-reviewed journals can also be complimented through the use of blogs and video blogs. Tailoring information in an easy to understand jargon free concept e.g. Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media can make it easier for the community to understand and refer to the information, ask questions and share that as peer-to-peer recommendation. Check out this example called “Healthy holiday eating – remakes of favorite recipes” from the Mayo Clinic website.

5. Due to the lack of time and opportunity, researchers can find it difficult to connect and network with their colleagues from different research areas even though working under the same roof. Another typical example is where researchers from the same institution but from different projects end up doing their work on one community causing research fatigue in the community. Instead through a professional  social networking tool like Yammer, researchers can keep in touch on what their overall organization is working on and reduce duplication, exchange experience and share knowledge and information.

For my oral presentation at the 8th  Australian and New Zealand Adolescent Health Conference (3rd IAAH Asia Pacific Congress) I prepared and demonstrated the use of a QR code in health communications and youth engagement. Present in the audience were health professionals who were interested in and experimenting with social media. The session chair was Fiona Robards, the manager of the NSW Centre for Advancement of Adolescent Health.

The QR code was to show its interplay between information and behavior.  With the help of the Fogg Behavior Model and how hot triggers can affect a behavior, I wanted the audience to get a feel of how we can now bridge the gap between stimulus and response. Not just any response, but an action that can get a client closer (through small baby steps) to (i) engage with the particular health service or (ii) at least have a better chance of looking at the health service  website and take down its contact details with very little effort.

The QR code would take the audience (once scanned via smartphone) to a more in-depth blog article on the topic of my presentation at the Conference. In short, I gave the audience who kindly attended my talk two presentations for the price of one!

I used Paperlinks to generate my QR code and to manage my mobile web page. I also made use of their free analytic tool which provide basic data. I started giving out the QR code (a total of 100) which was printed and laminated from the 7th of November until the 28th of November 2011.

What  the data say

100 laminated QR codes were given out between the 7th of November – 28th of November 2011

Target group: Health professionals, academics, medical students, youth workers, clinicians.

Total visit: 78

Total unique visit: 70

Total visitors who clicked the Introduction page: 38

Total visitors who clicked on my link to the blog article: 23

Scans were made from iPhone (47), iPad (2) and Android (4 visits) devices.

Geographical data:

When location services on the mobile devices were enabled it showed me where scans were being made. Some as far as New Zealand and the United States.

What do you think so far?

Health professionals are a hard group to crack and I don’t a younger target group would have been easier. I noticed The Greens had a poster up regarding cheaper clean energy and a QR code in the bottom of the poster taking you to their URL. It made me think why I wasn’t compelled to scan it. Why do you think, scanning the code was not automatic for me, although I’m currently researching it?

Related articles

• QR Codes Gone Wild (greatfinds.icrossing.com)
• Retailers linking services through QR Codes but where are health services? (youthhealth20.com)
• Yay Or Nay Of QR Code Marketing (gabrielcatalano.com)
• Does anyone use QR Codes? The jury is still out (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)