There has been significant discussion in the last year about how digital and social media impact communication about health, especially how its impacts the role of both the public and companies in that industry. Knowing that these changes could affect those of us who spend our days communicating on behalf of health clients, Edelman’s Health practice has been focused on developing materials to educate ourselves and clients about how digital media impacts the traditionally regulated industry and its communication efforts. This includes a weekly post called the Health Digital Check-Up that is shared across our network and on EdelmanDigital.com.
As you can now see, Jessi Langsen and I decided to switch some things up this week – she took over the Check-Up that went up on Tuesday and discussed places you wouldn’t necessarily think to look for health online. So, for my side of the trade, I’m here to talk about the places where health gets talked about the most.
Even if you don’t work in the health PR space, this still matters to you. Research from Edelman’s Health Engagement Barometer indicated that 58 percent of global respondents relied on at least one digital source for health information. More importantly, health is becoming a topic about which every industry is expected to place a focus; it’s even being called the new “Green.” It’s worth it for everyone to be familiar with the common corners that conversations about health care can be found – for professional reason or personal ones.
Search Results
The most common way that a generally healthy person will interact with health information online is via a search inquiry. Pew data indicates that 2/3 of Internet users last went looking for health information in search engines. These users aren’t necessarily looking to find a diagnosis, but as the original Health Engagement Barometer found, 88 percent of people validate the information they find online with their doctor.
Health Information Sites
There are many sites around the world offering hundreds of articles on conditions, treatments, and symptoms for any information seeker to find. Depending on your region, you may be familiar with WebMD in North America, NetDoctor in the UK, the German Gesundheit, Australia’s ABC Health & Wellbeing, or your local counterpart. By way of their large databases, they are often are among the first search results on Bing or Google for health-related queries. These sites have gained much of their credibility by working with medical professionals and writers to build out their deep content reserves.
Physician-Only Networks
There has been an interesting discussion among doctors who are active online regarding how best to interact with patients in social media, if at all (for more on why, check out this article from the New England Journal of Medicine). Many connect to each other in private social networks, including the largest physician community online, Sermo.
Patient Communities
Among all of the online groups discussing health, there is one group with a different stake: people with chronic diseases or other medical conditions and their loved ones. These groups vary in size depending on each condition, but through rich topic-specific blog networks (especially around common conditions like diabetes) or disease-specific support groups on sites like Inspire, those who choose to interact online have the opportunity to easily make engagement an active part of their personal health care and advocacy.
The Networks You’re Already On
Given the integration of media and social networks, it probably isn’t surprising to find many organizations are slowly dipping their toes into the digital water by slowly building Twitter presences or Facebook pages. Next time you hear about a health news story, do a quick search on Twitter or Facebook. These networks seem to be used in varying ways in each region: as an interesting comparison, data from the Health Engagement Barometer showed that respondents in Asia were three times likelier to use Twitter to gain health information as their North American counterparts.
