Improving Health Promotion Through the Integration of Technology, Crowdsourcing, and Social Media

Abstract

As Internet accessibility and technological innovations continue to increase communication, new opportunities have emerged to leverage these tools to improve health promotion practice. Advances and utilization of collaborative Internet communication, or social media, have provided global connectivity on an unprecedented scale. Using these innovations to leverage the collective intellect of online communities for specific goals, crowdsourcing is an approach that has the potential to solve complex public health problems. Due to the novelty of crowdsourcing implementations and the relative infancy of its application within public health, it is necessary to examine examples to facilitate practitioner conceptualization and application. This article details the development and application of a crowdsourced effort leveraging social media and technology to assist in relief efforts during Hurricane Harvey. Furthermore, the article presents examples corresponding to a typology of crowdsourcing for public health, including Knowledge Discovery and Management, Distributed Human Intelligence Tasking, Broadcast Search, and Peer-Vetted Creative Production problems. Leveraging these innovative applications has positive implications for health promotion practice, including improved intervention development and evaluation, increased multidisciplinary collaboration, and enhanced facilitation of communication, information exchange, and support.

How can crowdsourcing help tackle the COVID‐19 pandemic? An explorative overview of innovative collaborative practices

“…The global COVID‐19 health emergency ‘has spurred an unprecedented response on one side by the biomedical research community aimed at identifying the mechanism of transmission, infection and immune response, epidemic forecasting and treatments for this novel disease’ (Desai et al, 2020), on the other by the innovation community to stimulate and disseminate innovative practices in the effort to prevent, mitigate, and ultimately overcome this crisis. Likewise to what was done in the past under similar circumstances, for example, by Conrad et al (2020) about the development and application of a crowdsourced effort to assist in relief efforts during Hurricane Harvey, this paper details the development and implementation of crowdsourcing projects and initiatives devoted to the SARS‐CoV‐2 outbreak. Besides the crowdsourcing projects for COVID‐19 reported by Desai et al (2020) with a specific focus on oncology and medicine, we identified 16 crowdsourcing initiatives.…”

“…Thanks to its variety of approaches and flexibility, crowdsourcing has been recognized as a useful tool during crises for crisis monitoring, emergency planning, and crisis management, social cohesion, and research (Conrad et al, 2020; Desai et al, 2020). Timely intervention is essential to try to respond effectively to the crisis.…”

How Parents and Their Children Used Social Media and Technology at the Beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Associations with Anxiety

“…Delivery of accurate and helpful content via social media might be improved if organizations (especially trusted outlets) use crowdsourcing techniques (i.e., using the input of large numbers of individuals to help solve a problem or distribute information) to filter outgoing information to consumers. As an example, Conrad et al 36 showed that they could leverage social media and crowdsourcing to promote health in times of crisis. In that case, they used a peer-vetted crowdsourcing system and Slack as a collaboration tool to provide feedback that drove relief and resource allocation efforts in response to Hurricane Harvey in Texas.…”

“…In that case, they used a peer-vetted crowdsourcing system and Slack as a collaboration tool to provide feedback that drove relief and resource allocation efforts in response to Hurricane Harvey in Texas. 36 Although there are challenges to implementing these types of initiatives across an entire country (e.g., legal, liability, and cost issues), 37 collating resources from trusted sources might help reduce the chance of an infodemic, wherein individuals are inundated with false rumors via media (WHO, 2020).…”

Tygerberg Research Ubuntu-Inspired Community Engagement Model: Integrating Community Engagement into Genomic Biobanking

“…83 This leverages the collective intellect of online communities for specific goals and has been shown to improve intervention development and evaluation, as well as enhancing the facilitation of communication. 84 The empowerment of communities in research should be a primary aim, with each subsequent project building upon this. A focus on the creation of varied, but equal roles in groups and subgroups, which build upon the skills of the individual members of the community, is vital.…”