Cast & Curious

Tag: health advocacy

  • Effective healthcare campaigns in changing digital media environment- From “You do it” to “Let’s do it!

    Vaccination and measles outbreak flooded our social media feeds recently. The sad news is we thought we eradicated measles decades ago. Measles however, only hogged the media limelight after an outbreak happened. “What went wrong with the measles campaign?” many asked. There’s no shortage of blaming on what many called “a failure” to counter an “avalanche of online misinformation” about vaccination and vaccines. Measles and vaccinations are just two of the many health campaigns that took centerstage after an “outbreak” happened. Heard of health supplements? Alternative cancer treatments? Dengue? Flu? Smoking? Vaping? Diabetes? Kidney diseases? We din’t notice until something alarming happened. We blame the new media and the people who use it for their own purposes-good or bad. Then we rush to using the same new media to counter such online misinformation. We fail and wonder. How come?

    First allow me to narrow the discussion to health campaigns on social media. Successful health campaigns are not solely because of an effective media strategy let alone a savvy social media leader. The whole caboodles of political, economic, logistical and support systems should be in place before we can even talk of launching it on social media. Having said that, and for the sake of our discussion, lets assume we all have those factors sorted out in place and we’re left with an effective social media campaign strategy to go with the health advocacy.

    In the past we had leaders adept in using media to implement effective healthcare campaigns. Think Dr. Juan Flavier and his much loved health news, radio and TV campaigns. He and his health campaigns were blockbusters, to his avid followers and critics alike. The charismatic secretary seemed to have mastered old media messaging and signalling and was very effective in mobilizing the crowd. He is interested in empowering the public, not himself nor his organization- a novel, laudable new media value. This cascading top to bottom healthcare campaign strategy worked for old media- newspapers, radio and TV. Will it work for the new media?

    T1. What old media health campaign strategies work in social media?

    Internet and social media showed much promise for advocacies and campaigns. Twitter had been instrumental in monitoring or reporting disease outbreaks for CDC and WHO. Healthcare organizations employed social media platforms to pressure health policy changes in some countries, and won. Social media campaigns played a huge part in the passage of Sin Tax Law and the Universal Healthcare Law in the Philippines. Incremental wins some may call it but a win nonetheless. Let’s not forget, the millions of money that poured in to health advocacy groups because of memes such as the “Ice bucket Challenge”. Why some organisations are successful in using social media to meet the objectives of their healthcare campaigns (and others, do not) remains a mystery to many.

    Internet and social media comprise the “new media”. Internet gatekeepers and social media platforms keep changing its policies, algorithm and strategies to achieve its bottomline- profit for its owners and shareholders. That’s not altogether bad given the social media platforms who succeeded in providing desirable value to the general public while maintaining a profitable and sustainable business model. That social media is hog washed in false information and dubious health messages is also not true. There’s no dearth of superior quality health information online according to Keselman (2019). Despite the presence of superior quality and credible online health information, some health campaigns failed to mobilize a hyperconnected populace. Why did it fail? Was it the messaging? Platform? Theme?

    T2. What are the reasons behind the failure of some health social media campaigns to mobilize the crowd and effect change?

    In their book New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World- and How to Make It Work for You, Heimans and Timms (2018) placed leadership archetypes into a spectrum, a quadrant on how leadership structures (termed old/new power) use old/new power values to effect change.

    Leadership Archetypes in a quadrant with examples of leaders/organizations who best exemplifies each quadrant. Image from HBR article here https://hbr.org/2014/12/understanding-new-power

    Arguably, the top down, cascading model of social media campaigns don’t work effectively in digital social media environment.

    Old versus new power values. Image from HBR article here https://hbr.org/2014/12/understanding-new-power

    The “I’m the expert just follow what I say” seem to be a less appealing to social media crowd than that of the “bottoms up, grassroots or collaborative approach. The new leadership model committed to empowering the crowd with new power values are the most successful ones. Values like collaboration, radical transparency, maker mentality and overall general participation characterise this new power value. Social media smacks right into the heart of these new power values. Leaders who are adept at these new power values empower and mobilize the crowd .

    T3. What best strategy can you advise health leaders in using social media to mobilize and effect change in healthcare?

    Thankfully, many organisations (old and new power structures alike) are restructuring, recalibrating their health campaigns to align with the intricacies of new power tools, like social media. That is something we can learn from this deluge of disease outbreaks and health misinformation. This is the topic of this #HealthXPh chat come February 9, 2019 9PM Manila time as we build consensus of how to’s in implementing health social media campaigns that empowers and mobilizes the crowd.

    Join #healthXPh chat with these guide questions in mind:

    • T1. What old media health campaign strategies work in social media?
    • T2. Why did some social media campaigns failed to mobilize the crowd and effect change in healthcare?
    • T3. What best social media strategy will you advise health leaders in mobilising and effecting changes in healthcare?

    References:

    • Keselman A, Arnott Smith C, Murcko AC, Kaufman DR (2019) Evaluating the Quality of Health Information in a Changing Digital Ecosystem J Med Internet Res 2019;21(2):e11129 URL: https://www.jmir.org/2019/2/e11129
    • Sak,G; Diviani, N; Allam, A; Schulz, P: (2016) Comparing the Quality of Pro- and Anti-vaccination Online InformationA Content Analysis of Vaccination-Related Webpages BMC Public Health. 2016;16(38) 
    • Heimans, J; Timms, H. (2014) “Understanding “New Power””. Harvard Business Review. December 2014.
    • Heimans, J; Timms, H. (2018) New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World- and How to Make It Work for You. New York, Penguin Random House LLC

  • Part I: An Introduction into Aligning Social Media Strategy to your Advocacy Goals

    Social Media Strategy and Healthcare

    There’s no denying social media is here, now. Our society live and breathe social media. In fact, many experts believe social media is the “game changer” in many sectors of our society now and in the foreseeable future. #HealthXPh believe social media is a tool to positively change or improve healthcare in the Philippines.

    Ethical Issues

    Put simply, the use of social media by healthcare professionals is  strictly governed by the same professional code of conduct practiced offline. At #HealthXPh, we believe that our online self is a reflection of our offline self. Thus, #HealthXPh crowdsourced a Healthcare Professional Social Media Manifesto to guide health practitioners on the ethical use of social media. This manifesto should not discourage health professionals from using social media. In fact, health professionals now have a guide walking the path of a tricky social media.  There are numerous examples on the ethical use of social media to improve healthcare. #HealthXPh believe social media democratizes access to healthcare. It provides a venue for healthcare stakeholders to speak and be heard on matters pertaining to health. No other forms of media had this added value of “engagement” between the different stakeholders of health.

    Healthcare Social Media and its “Return on Investment” (ROI)

    One of the more pervasive perception about social media healthcare is that it is just a “waste of time”. Social media is a waste of time if you are using it just to kill time. Our value proposition  for healthcare social media at #HealthXPh is different, positive and complimentary to existing developmental strategies for health. Social media provides an alternative, fast, cheaper, broader reach platform for discussing healthcare issues. Social media demands transparency and accountability to all those who use it. Our long term goal is to democratize discussion in health, by giving the different stakeholders a platform for discussion and effect change by crowdsourcing ideas.  Positive engagement is our key and that is what we set out to ultimately measure our ROI in healthcare social media.

    Lack of ROI for healthcare professionals engaged in social media is the very reason why some called it a “waste of time”. The inability to measure social media’s ROI for health is the culprit. That’s what the goal of my topic today here, in the Second Philippine Healthcare Social Media Summit- Advocacy Track.

    Return on investment (ROI) is a business phrase that describe the benefit to an investor resulting from an investment of some resource (Wikipedia). Allow me to draw the same parallelism in healthcare social media. To clarify, the investment and benefit maybe anything of value to the investor and may not be always monetary. At #HealthXPh, we defined our ROI as the positive engagement we obtained from convening social media healthcare professionals.  This is still a short term goal and is continually evolving until we find our metrics for our ultimate goal- improve healthcare in the Philippines.

    ROI as we defined it, declutters the social media noise and allows us to focus on our social media advocacy goals. #HealthXPh as an advocacy aligned our social media strategy to our advocacy goals. Hence, a method of measuring our social media “success” or ROI, is a measure too of our advocacy’s success. Demonstrating social media success by measuring ROI fine tunes our efforts and streamline logistics to advance our advocacy goals. In other advocacies or companies, demonstrating success by measuring ROI is a way to encourage or gain support from advocacy leaders or executives.  It is thus imperative we measure ROI in social media healthcare. It is not the lack of ROI but the lack of defining our social media ROI for our advocacies. This is the ultimate goal of my talk today.

    To share to you what I’ve learned about Aligning Social Media Strategy to Your Advocacy Goals and developing metrics to measure your healthcare social media’s success!

    So are we ready to dive into social media strategy for healthcare advocacy?

    (This post is part of series on “Aligning Social Media Strategy to your Advocacy Goals“, a presentation by the author Dr. Remo-tito Aguilar, on the Advocacy Track of the Second #HealthXPh Philippine Healthcare Social Media Summit held last April 21, 2016 at the PICC, Manila.)