TY - JOUR
T1 - Linking podcasts with social media to promote community health and medical research
T2 - feasibility study
AU - Balls-Berry, Joyce
AU - Sinicrope, Pamela
AU - Soto, Miguel Valdez
AU - Brockman, Tabetha
AU - Bock, Martha
AU - Patten, Christi
N1 - Funding Information:
This publication was made possible by Clinical and Translational Science Awards Grant Number UL1TR002377 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, a component of NIH. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official view of NIH. We thank Michelle Lewis for editing and formatting assistance.
Funding Information:
The development of meaningful podcast content was supported by CEP and Smartride Network. Our partner, Smartride Network, is a collaborative, community-based organization that hosts a variety of cultural, art, health, and biomedical research programs. To select topics for podcasts, we referred the Olmsted County Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) [20]. The CHNA not only recommended health topics, but also stated that new social media approaches should be developed for disseminating information within the growing Olmsted County community. This article reports the process that stakeholders used to develop podcast topics and promote the podcasts themselves on social media, as well as the basic analytics of audience reach, impressions, and engagement as reported through the number of downloads, shares, and reactions posted on SoundCloud, Twitter, and Facebook.
Publisher Copyright:
©Joyce Balls-Berry, Pamela Sinicrope, Miguel Valdez Soto, Tabetha Brockman, Martha Bock, Christi Patten.
PY - 2018/7
Y1 - 2018/7
N2 - Background: Linking podcasts with social media is a strategy to promote and disseminate health and health research information to the community without constraints of time, weather, and geography. Objective: To describe the process of creating a podcast library and promoting it on social media as a strategy for disseminating health and biomedical research topics to the community. Methods: We used a community and patient engagement in research approach for developing a process to use podcasts for dissemination of health and health research information. We have reported the aspects of audience reach, impressions, and engagement on social media through the number of downloads, shares, and reactions posted on SoundCloud, Twitter, and Facebook, among others. Results: In collaboration with our local community partner, we produced 45 podcasts focused on topics selected from a community health needs assessment with input from health researchers. Episodes lasted about 22 minutes and presented health-related projects, community events, and community resources, with most featured guests from Olmsted County (24/45, 53%). Health research was the most frequently discussed topic. Between February 2016 and June 2017, episodes were played 1843 times on SoundCloud and reached 1702 users on our Facebook page. Conclusions: This study demonstrated the process and feasibility of creating a content library of podcasts for disseminating health- and research-related information. Further examination is needed to determine the best methods to develop a sustainable social media plan that will further enhance dissemination (audience reach), knowledge acquisition, and communication of health topics.
AB - Background: Linking podcasts with social media is a strategy to promote and disseminate health and health research information to the community without constraints of time, weather, and geography. Objective: To describe the process of creating a podcast library and promoting it on social media as a strategy for disseminating health and biomedical research topics to the community. Methods: We used a community and patient engagement in research approach for developing a process to use podcasts for dissemination of health and health research information. We have reported the aspects of audience reach, impressions, and engagement on social media through the number of downloads, shares, and reactions posted on SoundCloud, Twitter, and Facebook, among others. Results: In collaboration with our local community partner, we produced 45 podcasts focused on topics selected from a community health needs assessment with input from health researchers. Episodes lasted about 22 minutes and presented health-related projects, community events, and community resources, with most featured guests from Olmsted County (24/45, 53%). Health research was the most frequently discussed topic. Between February 2016 and June 2017, episodes were played 1843 times on SoundCloud and reached 1702 users on our Facebook page. Conclusions: This study demonstrated the process and feasibility of creating a content library of podcasts for disseminating health- and research-related information. Further examination is needed to determine the best methods to develop a sustainable social media plan that will further enhance dissemination (audience reach), knowledge acquisition, and communication of health topics.
KW - Biomedical research
KW - Community and patient engagement in research
KW - Community health
KW - Podcast
KW - Social media
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85096865260&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.2196/10025
DO - 10.2196/10025
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85096865260
SN - 2561-326X
VL - 2
JO - JMIR Formative Research
JF - JMIR Formative Research
IS - 2
M1 - e10025
ER -