Category Archives: public health

Technology, Health Communication, and Public Health

Posted on September 4, 2008 | 4 comments

My thesis could be based on:

“The rapid emergence of new communication technologies and new uses of older technologies, such as telephone, also provide new opportunities and dilemmas. A variety of electronic media for interactive health communication (for example, teh Internet, CD-ROMs, and personal digital assistants [PDAs]) can serve as source of individualized health information, reminders, and social support for health behavior change (Viswanath, 2006; Ahern, Phalen, Le, and Goldman, 2007). These new technologies also may connect individuals with similar health concerns around the world (Bukachi and Pakenham-Walsh, 2007). This may be especially important for people with rare or stigmatized health conditions. However, the new products of the communication revolution have not equally reached affluent and more disadvantaged populations (Viswanath, 2005, 2006).

E-health strategies are becoming an important parto f the armamentarium of strategies for those in health education adn health behavior. Internet and computer-based applications, along with wireless technologies, can support many of the Health Behavior and Health Education strategies based on theories presented in [that] book. Use of new technologies should be based on theories of health behavior and be evaluated (Ahern, Phalen, Le, and Goldman, 2007). Otherwise, we risk being technology-driven instead of outcome-driven.

At the same time, new technologies have the potential to cause harm through misleading or deceptive information, promotion of inappropriate self-care, and interference in the patient-provider relationship (Science Panel on Interactive Communciation and Health, 1999), although the empirical evidence on harms remains to be documented. Interactive health communcations provide new options for behavioral medicine and preventive medicine (Noell and Glasgow, 1999; Fotheringham, Owies, Leslie, and Owen, 2000) and are altering the context of health behavior and health education as they unfold and as their effects are studied (Hesse and others, 2005).”

Excerpt from pages 8-9 of Health Behavior and Health Education: Theory, Research, and Practice by Karen Glanz, Barbara K. Rimer, and K. Viswanath.

4 Comments

Posted in communications, public health, technology

location based app for health

Posted on August 15, 2008 | 3 comments

What about using the iPhone’s location-based technology for health? This is an extension of a program ISIS does, in that text participants get SMSes relative to the time of day. For example, it’s 10pm on a Friday night — you get a text that says, “appoint a designated driver,” or “grab a condom from the fishbowl at ‘x’ Bar or pub.”

With location-based technology, the first thing that comes to mind is if you’re nearby a park or, say, walking along San Francisco’s Embarcadero, this application would tell you to do five push-ups by the giant bow-and-arrow … or something cooler, but you get my drift.

3 Comments

Posted in apps, public health, technology

research on technology and reaching youth with health messages

Posted on August 15, 2008 | 4 comments

Got an assignment today to “research on technolgy [sic] and reaching youth with health messages.” Might as well document it for myself and everyone else.

everything you need to know

Stanford professor Dr. BJ Fogg organized a conference (texting4health.org — the name says it all) earlier this year addressing mobile-technology for health. He states, “Mobile phones will become the #1 platform for persuasion.” Looks like the conference was done in partnership with, amongst others, the American Heart Association and ISIS.

This is excellent, it’s not youth specific, but if you combine the info presented here with the pew internet research (where the above charts came from), i think it adds up to something that makes sense. and much, much more useful, telling data.

other stuff i found

case study
youth and electronic communication (section 4)

not youth oriented, but this gives you an idea of different ways to interact with and present info to the youth via texting service.

4 Comments

Posted in communications, public health, technology

SexInfo via SMS / Texting

Posted on August 6, 2008 | 4 comments

Let’s start by saying I didn’t mean to come off as trite in the recent post addressing texting campaigns abroad — indeed I wish I had thought of it and would like to put it to action through personal projects. With that out of the way, next week I get to meet [again] the founder and director of Internet Sexuality Information Services (ISIS), Deb Levine, whose efforts were written up as a case study in a United Nations publication (new goal!), “Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in Mobile Use by NGOs” with a forward (addressing the publication, not the case study specifically) by Ted Turner. Wow.

Definitely check out the publication for more concrete examples to leverage mobile technology. There are other case studies on global health issues such as “Delivering Patient HIV/AIDS care (South Africa),” “Connecting Health Clinics with Remote Health Workers (Uganda),” and “Lowering the Barriers for Access to Public Health Data (Kenya, Zambia).”

But despite all these efforts in Africa, I remain sullen and affected from my recent viewing of The Constant Gardener. It will take a while to unwrench the knife twisted in my gut from that movie. One corporatism tag for Big Pharma for this post. Ugh.

4 Comments

Posted in fascism + corporatism, great moments in public health and pop culture, mobile advertising, public health, technology

Rule of Acquisition #34 Anticorollary Anticorollary: Fascism is Good for Public Health

Posted on August 5, 2008 | Comments Off on Rule of Acquisition #34 Anticorollary Anticorollary: Fascism is Good for Public Health

The Nazis were researchers and advocates of the harmful effects of smoking and tobacco.

Comments Off on Rule of Acquisition #34 Anticorollary Anticorollary: Fascism is Good for Public Health

Posted in fascism + corporatism, Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, public health

Una Mesa and Open Source

Posted on August 5, 2008 | 5 comments

Eureka! An example of a public health movement engaged in the open source movement, Una Mesa. Explore — however, to save you a click, here are the essentials:

Open source software plays a key role in the research and development of better social services

  • UnaMesa works with communities to develop tools that serve their needs
  • Requires the ability to share and build upon each other’s work (Open Source)

How UnaMesa supports Open Source developers

  • Developer community sites – TiddlyWiki.org, SharedRecords.org
  • Purchase code / support on behalf of the community (How do OS programmers eat) (e.g. Eric Shulman’s support of TiddlyWiki community)
  • Public Trust – Holds copyright on behalf of the community (Allows integration with any projects that provide social benefit regardless of which open-source license they use.
  • Support for localization

How UnaMesa supports social organizations that use Open Source

  • Provides software tools and services for free to social enterprises (e.g. SharedRecords.org)
  • Demonstrates how technology is used in real life situations (e.g. TiddlyWiki in education, SharedRecords in clincs)
  • Provides training and support for users (UnaMesa Academy)

How UnaMesa supports businesses that work with Open Source

  • Provides a neutral, trusted intermediary to protect the interests of both the community and the corporate participants (e.g. TiddlyWiki and BT Osmosoft)
  • Negotiate on behalf of the community to establish appropriate licenses and contracts for corporate contributions of code
  • Accepts contributions from corporations and ensures that they go directly to supporting the developer community (e.g. support of Martin)

5 Comments

Posted in open source, public health, technology

Moving beyond texting for public health

Posted on August 5, 2008 | 3 comments

SMS as a modality for public health communication is so 1.5+ years ago. It’s trendy and effective(!) in Africa and certainly applicable to other rural areas of the world (mental note: remember this for vaccination projects in greater China as well as Vietnamese communities beyond Hanoi and Saigon). In case you’re interested in hopping on the bandwagon, here are good resources I picked up from attending a NetSquared presentation featuring Ben Rigby:

Anyhow, and beyond that, according to a Wikipedia entry on mobile advertising:

“Other forms include MMS advertising, advertising within mobile games and mobile videos, during mobile TV receipt, full-screen interstices, which appear while a requested item of mobile content or mobile web page is loading up, and audio adverts (eg, in the form of a jingle before a voicemail recording).”

Throwing down the gauntlet to myself and others to flesh out these other forms of mobile public health PSAs.

3 Comments

Posted in mobile advertising, PSA, public health, technology

Warning: Habits May Be Good for You

Posted on July 14, 2008 | 2 comments

This article was shared with me this morning via hard copy. I looked for it in the health section of nytimes.com, but eventually had to resort to a search — it resided in the Business section. Discussion to come after I read and digest the it.

Jonathan Player for The New York Times

2 Comments

Posted in communications, media, public health

Open source for public health

Posted on July 14, 2008 | 5 comments

I hope to explore the promotion of public health and the efforts thereof as based on the theory and practice of open source culture. Is public health already thoroughly open source? Are studies and journals easily and financially accessible? What else?

5 Comments

Posted in open source, public health

Noncommercial songs for PSAs or otherwise health promotional videos

Posted on July 14, 2008 | 2 comments

I’m in the middle of creating a short, generic, multi-use video documenting the Asian Liver Center‘s LiveRight Run 2008 tailored towards the Vietnamese population. I’ve been mulling for a legal approach for music for my short clip and had settled upon recruiting the Pizookies to create a short jam to match the mood of this piece (something akin to Dashboard Confessional’s “Don’t Wait”). Today a delve into the concept and culture of open source and the Creative Commons licensing serendipitously presented another solution of entering “noncommercial songs” into a search engine (as demonstrated on their site):


Up until this moment, I had only knowledge of a database of royalty-free loops.

2 Comments

Posted in Asian Liver Center at Stanford University, media, open source, PSA, public health