Social marketing - Health Promotion

Most hospitals offer palliative-care services that help people with serious illnesses manage their pain and other symptoms and make decisions about their treatment while providing emotional support and assistance in navigating the health-care system. But the majority of these programs fail to meet national guidelines for staffing, a recent study found.

The global public health initiative to eradicate polio is "not a done deal." That's the consensus at the 2016 World Health Summit in Berlin. There is plenty of potential for us to fail. On three counts.

If it weren't for the short-sightedness of business, we may not be in the situation we are with polio today. In the late 1990s we were heading towards a global public health goal of eradicating the disease by the year 2000.

By 1999, things were looking good. And the World Health Organization says one strand - poliovirus type 2 - was indeed eradicated that year.

But Suraya Dalil, the Afghan ambassador to Switzerland, suggests commercial concerns at the time may have led us to where we are now.

"We wanted to eradicate polio by 2000," says Dalil. "I remember I was at UNICEF. But the [stock of] polio vaccine was very low because the manufacturers weren't making it, thinking that by 2000 no one would buy it."

And sixteen years later, says Dalil, we still face a global threat. Her home country, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are listed by the WHO as the two places in the world where polio transmission has never stopped.

Researchers have enrolled 2,000 people with metastatic breast cancer in 7 months using a social media-enabled, direct-to-patient model of recruiting. The study is using social media and blogs to drive patients to a website where they can consent to share medical records and genomic data with the researchers.

A team from the Broad Institute and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute set up the study to address the lack of genomic data from the tumors of patients with metastatic breast cancer. This situation is a consequence of many breast cancer patients being treated in community care settings. Faced with this shortfall in knowledge, the researchers designed a study that allows patients to consent to share parts of their tumor biopsies, medical records and saliva samples using at-home spit kits.

The design of the data-gathering elements of the trial free participants from the need to visit a study site. This makes it easier for the researchers to enroll subjects, but only if they can contact patients and persuade them of the value of participating. Like Pfizer ($PFE) before it, the Broad/Dana-Farber team has used social media to enroll subjects in its virtual trial. But, while the approach proved to be flawed for Pfizer’s trial, the strategy pursued by Broad and Dana-Farber is working for its study.

Marketing Sociale - Newsletter 140

SUMMARY

Objectives: reflecting upon which incentives social marketing and health education are based on, and their differences

and interconnections becomes essential to promote healthy lifestyles and ensure a free and sustainable future.

Methods: in order to promote health, it is necessary to use all the incentives that contribute to achieving this end.

Health education, social marketing and laws (expression of the policy) are to be considered the functional medium

of health promotion to be used generally or individually, according to the targets/contexts.

Results: the methods used to promote health are work in progress, the Community Based Prevention Marketing is

such an expression.

Conclusions: considering health as a resource for everyday life means externalizing it from what is seen as the sole

responsibility of the health system. Health should become the purpose of actions which, through cross-sector

synergies, concern the different components of civil society, particularly political agendas.

It’s like a FitBit for your sweat, detecting your blood alcohol level.

Skyn is a wristband from breathalyser company BACtrack, and it detects alcohol using a fuel cell technology not unlike that used by your friendly roadside RBT.

The device is worn on the wrist and offers continuous, real-time, and non-invasive monitoring of your TAC (Transdermal Alcohol Content). Alcohol is detected and measured with transdermal monitoring, which tracks the ethanol molecules escaping through the skin.

TAC samples are then converted into a history of your BAC (Blood Alcohol Content) with BACtrack’s proprietary algorithm. BACtrack Skyn uses an electrochemical sensor and connects via Bluetooth to an app on your smartphone.

Since it can take up to 45 minutes for alcohol to be transmitted through the skin its accuracy for some applications (like replacing traditional breathalysers) is unreliable. But what it can reliably be used for is continuous monitoring.

You can relay data to your doctor, it can warn you if you’ve had too much to drink.

Basically, you can passively track alcohol consumption in real-time. There’s no need to take a breath alcohol test — your estimated BAC result is on their wrist, continuously. For instance, your phone could vibrate to notify you that you’re approaching 0.04 per cent BAC and remind you to slow down your drinking.

If you’re aiming for sobriety, a nominated contact could receive a notification when your BAC has gone above 0.00 per cent.

Based in San Francisco, BACtrack won the “Wearable Alcohol Biosensor Challenge” competition held by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism with the Skyn, which came with a $200,000 prize. The competition aimed to uncover wearable technologies that can be used comfortably by everyday people, and was judged on accuracy.

“A limited quantity” of Skyn devices with be available later in the year, says BACtrack, who have opened registrations for pre-order availability notifications.

The Preamble of the Constitution of the World Health Organization reminds us that «Informed opinion and active cooperation on the part of the public are of the utmost importance in the improvement of the health of the people» (Grad, 2002). Nonetheless, nearly seven decades later, the conditions under which people can be informed and actively participate in their health management in a meaningful way are being globally challenged. Drawing from experience in a variety of areas that I will delve into in this article, I remain a believer that we can marshal the necessary forces to advance the communication of health issues and create a base for a health-literate population to make smart(er), healthier decisions that advance health and well-being.

Keywords: health communication, health literacy, Ebola, vaccines, innovation.

 The ultimate goal of health communication is to advance an informed and empowered individual who can make smart choices for themselves, their families and communities whether it be in daily life, business and/or public policy. While the goal and practice may seem elusive, a simple fundamental tenet is that we need to advance our communication prowess to develop health literacy from individuals to the body politic. Ideally, an ethical, evidence-based communication approach can build upon historical challenges of how we address issues in science and health – from creationism to the heliocentric theory of the universe to nuclear physics to climate change. While Darwin, Galileo, Copernicus and others challenged the conventional wisdom and the «faith-based» approach of their time, countless others joined then and now in advancing science-based approaches to make the world a better place.

According to a Pew Research Center report released last month, Americans are engaged and connected like never before. Nearly 70 percent own a smartphone, and 45 percent have a tablet-like device. It’s clear that almost all of us interact with mobile devices on a daily basis. Wearable sensor technology as well as connected watches and other mobile monitors are becoming more commonplace. And these new devices have the potential to significantly impact health care delivery in the U.S. today. 

Drinking diet (or sugar free) fizzy drinks during pregnancy makes women more likely to give birth to overweight children, according to research from the University of Manitoba in Canada.

The researchers found that mothers who drink sugar free, artificially sweetened beverages during pregnancy are twice as likely to have an overweight baby by the age of 12 months.

The findings suggest the possibility that children who are exposed to artificial sweeteners in the womb could develop a sweet tooth, leading them to eat foods higher in calories — but cautioned that this was not a biological study, and that they had merely observed a link.

You may have read or heard about the study debunking the five-second rule. It said that no matter how fast you pick up food that falls on the floor, you will pick up bacteria with it.

Our continued focus on this threat has long baffled me. Why are we so worried about the floor? So many other things are more dangerous than that.

I first became interested in the five-second rule years ago, when I was a co-author of a book on medical myths. We cited a number of studiesshowing that food that touched household surfaces — even for brief periods of time — could pick up bacteria or other harmful substances.

This most recent study was similar in that it tested a variety of foods, a variety of substances, for various periods. And, like those other studies, this one found that food touching the floor, even for a very short amount of time, could pick up bacteria.

The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo have donated millions of dollars to organizations that promote health. Sugary sodas are considered to be among the main factors behind the obesity epidemic and tooth decay, raising questions about whether health and medical organizations should accept manufacturers' donations.

A study led by Harvard Medical School investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital reveals how spontaneous changes in the molecular characteristics of tumors can lead to tumors with a mixed population of cells requiring treatment with several types of therapeutic drugs.

Get more HMS news here

In their report in Nature, the research team describes finding a mixture of HER2-positive and HER2-negative circulating tumors cells (CTCs) in blood samples from patients who developed metastatic disease after originally being diagnosed with estrogen-receptor (ER)-positive/HER2-negative breast cancer.

"This population of tumor cells is able to spontaneously oscillate between HER2-positive and HER2-negative states."—Shyamala Maheswaran

“Not only did we observe the acquisition of HER2 positivity in patients with ER-positive/HER2 negative breast tumors, we also found that this population of tumor cells is able to spontaneously oscillate between HER2-positive and HER2-negative states, which contributes to tumor progression and resistance,” said Shyamala Maheswaran, HMS associate professor of surgery at Mass General and co-senior author of the paper. “We also showed in mouse models the types of therapies that may be most useful for patients with these difficult-to-treat tumors.”

Osteoarthritis — the age-related, “wear-and-tear” form of joint disease — is the most common type of arthritis. And the knee is the most commonly affected joint. In fact, almost half of the population will have knee pain due to osteoarthritis by age 85. There is no cure; the only permanent treatment is a total knee replacement. More than 700,000 of these operations are performed in the U.S. each year, and the rate of knee replacement surgery has nearly doubled between 2000 and 2010.

Since surgery is a last resort, what can you do in the meantime? The mainstays of treatment include losing weight if you need to, exercise, various pain relievers and anti-inflammatory medications, and physical therapy. But these approaches don’t always work well. If they did, we’d have far fewer joint replacement surgeries!

Considering how common osteoarthritis of the knee is and how limited our treatments are, news of a novel approach to treating osteoarthritis of the knee comes none too soon.

Background: Prevailing health care structures and cultures restrict intraprofessional communication, inhibiting knowledge dissemination and impacting the translation of research into practice. Virtual communities may facilitate professional networking and knowledge sharing in and between health care disciplines.

Objectives: This study aimed to review the literature on the use of social media by health care professionals in developing virtual communities that facilitate professional networking, knowledge sharing, and evidence-informed practice.

Methods: An integrative literature review was conducted to identify research published between 1990 and 2015. Search strategies sourced electronic databases (PubMed, CINAHL), snowball references, and tables of contents of 3 journals. Papers that evaluated social media use by health care professionals (unless within an education framework) using any research design (except for research protocols or narrative reviews) were included. Standardized data extraction and quality assessment tools were used.

Results: Overall, 72 studies were included: 44 qualitative (including 2 ethnographies, 26 qualitative descriptive, and 1 Q-sort) and 20 mixed-methods studies, and 8 literature reviews. The most common methods of data collection were Web-based observation (n=39), surveys (n=23), interviews (n=11), focus groups (n=2), and diaries (n=1). Study quality was mixed. Social media studied included Listservs (n=22), Twitter (n=18), general social media (n=17), discussion forums (n=7), Web 2.0 (n=3), virtual community of practice (n=3), wiki (n=1), and Facebook (n=1). A range of health care professionals were sampled in the studies, including physicians (n=24), nurses (n=15), allied health professionals (n=14), followed by health care professionals in general (n=8), a multidisciplinary clinical specialty area (n=9), and midwives (n=2). Of 36 virtual communities, 31 were monodiscipline for a discrete clinical specialty. Population uptake by the target group ranged from 1.6% to 29% (n=4). Evaluation using related theories of “planned behavior” and the “technology acceptance model” (n=3) suggests that social media use is mediated by an individual’s positive attitude toward and accessibility of the media, which is reinforced by credible peers. The most common reason to establish a virtual community was to create a forum where relevant specialty knowledge could be shared and professional issues discussed (n=17). Most members demonstrated low posting behaviors but more frequent reading or accessing behaviors. The most common Web-based activity was request for and supply of specialty-specific clinical information. This knowledge sharing is facilitated by a Web-based culture of collectivism, reciprocity, and a respectful noncompetitive environment. Findings suggest that health care professionals view virtual communities as valuable knowledge portals for sourcing clinically relevant and quality information that enables them to make more informed practice decisions.

Conclusions: There is emerging evidence that health care professionals use social media to develop virtual communities to share domain knowledge. These virtual communities, however, currently reflect tribal behaviors of clinicians that may continue to limit knowledge sharing. Further research is required to evaluate the effects of social media on knowledge distribution in clinical practice and importantly whether patient outcomes are significantly improved.

Editor's Note: PLOSBLOGS invited independent science journalist Beth Skwarecki to assess and contextualize the controversy which errupted in the US surrounding last month's release of Vaxxed, a documentary film made by and about anti-vaccine proponent and discredited doctor Andrew Wakefield. Our purpose in publishing the post that follows is not to review this film (problematic in any event since preview copies were not made available to press), but rather to provide a context for the reignited debate about vaccines that it has already provoked--and may still cause as its distribution expands to Asia. We want to help our readers--including parents attempting to make the correct decision about vaccinating their children, public health providers responding to vaccine hesitancy on the part of worried parents and public health researchers charged to provide evidence-based guidance on best practices for communicating vaccine efficacy and safety--to counter the current re-emergence of anti

One of the subtler sleights of hand used by obesity crusaders is to talk about obesity while using figures that refer to people who are obese or overweight. Health reporters do it all the time and subeditors frequently put the word ‘obesity’ in the headline when the story is actually about people who are overweight (see here and here, to pick two examples at random).

Since there are more overweight people than there are obese people, the effect — and probably the intention — of this blurring of the lines is to inflate the number of supposed victims of the obesity ‘epidemic’. A quarter of Britons are obese, but if you add in people who are merely overweight this rises to 60 per cent.