I am proud to announce the creation of my new consulting and communication company, Digital Health Impact, Inc.
We intend to revolutionize health by integrating the reach and ubiquity of new media with the theory and science of health communication and marketing. We work with governmental, academic, non-profit, and for-profit clients to harness the power of populations through information and communication technologies to promote healthy behaviors and outcomes.
Over the next several months, we will be sharing a number of tools and resources related to our work, so we encourage you to subscribe to this page and to check back regularly for updates. We also invite you to share your suggestions for ways to spread the word about our work to organizations and partners that can benefit from greater Digital Health Impact.
Thank you.
I live in a town in “North-Central Florida” called Gainesville, which is home to the University of Florida. Gainesville is the hometown to a number of famous people including Bo Diddley, Darrell Hammond, and Michael Connelly (according to Wikipedia). It is also the hometown to a lesser-known but far wealthier celebrity, Craig Silverstein, Google’s chief technology officer and Google employee no. 1.
In July of this year, Craig returned home to Gainesville to attend his 20th high school reunion. While he was in town, he was kind enough to give an unscripted, public speech on his view of internet search now and in the future.
Craig shared many fascinating observations and predictions about the nature of information and how it can be stored, managed, and manipulated to make it more rapidly accessible. Speed of information access is the major issue on which he and his Google colleagues obsess the most. Their ultimate goal is to allow us all to have access to any information in the world exactly when and how we need it to make informed decisions.
Speed of access also drives Craig’s boldest prediction: That within the next 5-10 years, 95% of all internet search will be mobile-based. His exact quote: “Mark my words, in 10 years almost all the searches you do are going to be from a phone or a phone-like device that hasn’t been invented yet.”
This mobile transformation has huge potential for improving health in the US and around. We have known for decades that the vast majority of negative health outcomes are the result unhealthy behaviors, which themselves are often the result of unhealthy or uninformed everyday decisions. Imagine the potential of using mobile phones or devices to reach people with highly tailored and theoretically informed health messages at each health decision point in their lives! Mobile health (a.k.a. mHealth) has that potential, and it is up to us as scientists, researchers, and practitioners to determine how best to use it for the greatest positive impact.
Google's Craig Silverstein in Gainesville
Thanks Craig for the insightful remarks. We all look forward to seeing you back home again soon.
Posted in Health Communication Internet Search Social Media mHealth by .
Nov 10
12
Healthy Aging 2.0
I am again very behind on blog postings and will be trying to catch up over the next few weeks. Recently, I was invited to give a talk at the Italian Embassy in DC on Healthy Aging and 2.0 technologies. My presentation was part of the Global Health Forum, which was titled “Healthy Aging Globally: A Life Cycle Approach.” Specifically, I discussed the role of technology in healthcare as population demographics shift to an older society. In my talk, I define Healthy Aging 2.0 as “the effective use of participatory and collective technologies and applications to develop and maintain optimal mental, social and physical well-being and function in older adults and their social networks.”
Special thanks to Amanda Hall, doctoral student in the Department of Health Education and Behavior at the University of Florida for her assistance and input to this presentation. Thank you to Dr. Susan Blumenthal, former Assistant Surgeon General of the US, for inviting me to participate in this forum and to Ambassador Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata for his leadership, vision, and gracious hospitality.
Please let me know if you have any feedback or other examples to share about participatory technologies for healthy aging.
Posted in Uncategorized by .
I have been honored to serve five years in the federal government at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as Director of the National Center for Health Marketing. We accomplished a great deal with limited resources in a short period of time. I am proud to observe that many other federal agencies and non-governmental organization are now following our lead. On a personal level, I am privileged to have worked with such outstanding professionals and to have made so many friends.
Therefore, it is with mixed emotions that I share that I am returning to my roots in academia. I have accepted a position starting July 1, 2010 at the University of Florida as Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Education and Behavior in the College of Health and Human Performance. There are outstanding faculty, staff, students, and alumni associated with the department, college, and university and I look forward to working with them to continue and to grow on the excellence they have already achieved.
I will also establish and direct a new academic center at the University of Florida called the “Center for Digital Health and Wellness” that will focus on research, evaluation, and training related to the application of eHealth, mHealth, and social media to health promotion, disease prevention, wellness, and surveillance. As a tenured faculty member. I will also be able to spend a limited portion of my time on private consulting.
I extend my deepest thanks to all my CDC colleagues, collaborators, and partners and I look forward to creating new collaborations and partnerships in my new roles, and in a warmer climate, in sunny Florida.
Posted in CDC Health Communication Health Education Professional Development by .
After a long hiatus, I am pleased to be back in the blogosphere, writing about issues related to health communication, social marketing, and new media. Since my last blog entry in August 2009, the National Center for Health Marketing (NCHM) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was eliminated as part of a CDC-wide reorganization. As a result, I have decided to retire NCHM’s “Health Marketing Musings” Blog that was hosted at CDC.gov and replace it with this blog, called “Digital Health and Wellness,” which will focus on the enormous growth and potential of information and communication technology for improving medicine, health, and wellness in the US and around the world.
Please note that this is my personal blog and the opinions expressed here are mine alone and do not represent the official positions of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services, or any other organization with which I have current or previous affiliations. Also, please note that I imported all of the content of the “Health Marketing Musings” blog including my previous posts, guest posts, and all posted comments. Authors of these posts or comments can have them removed from this blog upon request.
It is great to be back and I look forward to a vigorous exchange of ideas and opinions with all of you.
Posted in Health Communication Resources Social Marketing Social Media by .
Aug 09
28
Participation Powers Prevention
I hope many of the readers of this blog were able to attend the National Conference for Health Communication, Marketing and Media, held in Atlanta a few weeks ago. This was our third conference, which brought together more than 1,000 professionals in health and risk communication, social marketing, ehealth, media relations, new media, and many other related disciplines. As a health communication and marketing professional, this conference is my favorite two and a half days of the year.
Posted in CDC Health Communication Professional Development Social Marketing by .
Jul 09
24
21st Century Outbreak
The recent launch of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) 2009 Flu Prevention Public Service Announcement (PSA) Contest reminded us how important a role health and risk communications play in responding to outbreaks and preventing the spread of infectious diseases. For those who haven’t heard about the PSA contest, HHS has invited the public to create a video PSA with a message about preventing or dealing with the flu and to post it on YouTube. The winner will be eligible to win a $2,500 cash prize.
This video contest is only one small piece of a much larger effort by HHS and CDC to prevent the spread of flu, both H1N1 and seasonal, and to reduce its impact on populations. This outbreak response, however, is fundamentally different from responses to previous outbreaks. Not only is outbreak of the novel H1N1 virus the first pandemic of the 21st century, it also represents the first time that the federal government has fully employed 21st century communication technology as part of a major outbreak response.
Posted in CDC Influenza Media Relations Social Media mHealth by .
Mar 09
30
Stimulating Better Health
Like many Americans, I closely followed the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the “Economic Stimulus Plan.” As a public health professional, I am keenly interested in the parts of the stimulus bill that promote health, such as the Prevention and Wellness Fund, which Jeanne Lambert wrote about as a “Wellness Trust” long before she was Deputy Director of the White House Office of Health Reform.
Posted in Internet Social Marketing Social Media by .