How Social Networks Are Changing Behaviour

"Social media is being used in many different ways across the health sector, allowing old things to be done in new ways and creating entirely new models of delivering care...."

This research summary from Australian Institute Of Health Innovation Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of Macquarie University is a collection of short discussions of topics related to the power of social networks' influence of health and health behaviours, information that helped shape their online tool Our Healthy.me.

The topics include:

• Social networks, social media and social diseases - Models of care using social media to treat "socially shaped" diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease include:

• Measuring the quality and safety of clinical care e.g. by crowdsourcing patient or clinician opinions on ...services;
• Emergency services e.g. broadcasting emergency information and tracking...; 
• Public health and health promotion e.g. broadcasting of public messages or using opinion leaders to disseminate messages;
• Disease management e.g. creating online spaces where patients can interact with clinicians and share experiences with other patients; and
• Network therapy e.g. modifying health behaviours to improve health and manage disease for diverse conditions...."

• Can social networks make us healthier? - Social network groups providing peer support in the way that face-to-face groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Weight Watchers influence behaviours can provide access to information and social support, better informed treatment decisions, and positive lifestyle choices.

• Is your information diet unhealthy? - This section links to research on negative influences of Twitter and other social networks on vaccine uptake. Research teams are looking at physical and digital locations of social media communities to use vaccine acceptance information as a "rain gauge" on use of social media for public health and behaviour change messaging.

• The darker side of YouTube - This review of 450 articles on YouTube found patient safety problems including: Public displays of unhealthy behaviour (e.g. ‘pro-anorexia’ and self-injury images) which are disproportionately highly accessed.

• "Tainted public health messages e.g. antivaccination messages that contradict or undermine evidence-based public health messages.
• Negative psychological impact e.g. people may feel stigmatised after watching negative or offensive portrayals of their illness or symptoms.
• Social media being used to intentionally distort public policy or research funding. There are few policies or guidelines to protect people from these harms. “

Skills that consumers of health information need are:

•  “Avoid potentially harmful material.
• Be respectful towards others.
• Report adverse incidents.
• Be cautious of bias from commercially motivated material.
• Be aware of the amplified extent of social influence of some online individuals."

• The power of a social network - This section promotes and explains the use of the tool Healthy.me as an e-health platform from the Centre for Health Informatics allowing people to keep track of their health information and "connect with others to share experiences, information and support...." including patient health management tools, social fora and polls, and "journey tools" for tracking hospital stays and courses of treatment, including links to research on its influence on positive health behaviours "(e.g. doubling the rates of influenza vaccination and Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) screening over a 6-month period)."