Over on Mind the Brain today, Shaili Jain, MD, a psychiatrist with Stanford and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System, explores the way social media can help people after natural disasters. Addressing the possible mental-health benefits, she writes:
In addition to essential basic resources such as food, shelter and water, connecting with one’s social support whether they be family, community, school and friends are important resources which help survivors recover in the aftermath of a disaster. Such social support offers great protection to survivors in curbing the development of these adverse mental health consequences.
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…[O]ne could argue that, for millennia, humans have been driven to gather, share testimony and memorialize in the aftermath of disaster. Anybody who works with trauma survivors can speak to the power of bearing witness to their trauma narrative and the healing that occurs when a survivor gives their testimony and how integral that is to their psychological recovery.
Jain highlights some of the research in this area before concluding that we don’t know enough to say that social-media use can prevent the negative mental-health consequences of experiencing a disaster. But, she writes, “the lure of integrating social media technology into our [relief] efforts remains very strong.”
The Connector will keep readers informed of the office’s activities, trainings, educational resources and funding opportunity announcements, as well as podcasts and videos of conversations with engaging behavioral and social sciences. These include:
Dr. Andrea Gielen on “The Science of Injury Prevention Research”
Dr. Charlene Quinn on the promise of mobile health technologies in managing diabetes
Dr. Brian Wansink on “mindless eating,” why we eat more than we think
In addition, the blog include commentaries from Robert Kaplan, PhD, director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research. Kaplan plans to explore a range of topics on the blog including mHealth, systems science, dissemination and implementation research and the NIH Toolbox. He also will discuss achieving better population health through improved dissemination of evidence-based interventions.
Rock Talk, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) blog on extramural research policy, debuted two years ago as a way to enhance transparency about how the federal agency develops policies and present data that influence such decisions.
In a commentary published yesterday in Nature, Sally Rockey, PhD, deputy director for extramural research at the NIH, discusses her motivation for launching the blog and how it has increased dialogue with constituents about science policy. She writes:
We learned a lot about our constituents’ interests and needs through the blog, and we have been able to highlight behind-the-scenes data, actively engage the community in policy-making and provide insight into our decisions. Without public input, effective and impactful policy cannot be created. My blogging experience has convinced me that using social-media platforms is one effective way for science-funding agencies to successfully support research.
The blog is not the official vehicle for communicating policy changes. We have the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts for that. And we have official channels for soliciting public feedback — through requests for information in the NIH Guide, for example. But the blog allows me to extend that conversation to people worldwide, many of whom I would not be able to reach in other ways. People are sometimes concerned that offering a dissenting opinion to NIH officials might affect their chances of getting funding. Although that is absolutely not the case, one advantage the blog does have over some other channels is that it allows people to remain anonymous if they wish.
In addition to fostering conversations on policy, Rockey offers examples of how the blog has allowed her team to provide real-time updates during national emergencies, such as Hurricane Sandy, and debunk urban myths about NIH-supported research.
Past research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project showed that online resources, including advice from peers, are a significant source of health information for patients in the United States. Now Inspire, a company that builds and manages online support communities for patients and caregivers, has teamed up with Manhattan Research and the National Psoriasis Foundation to better understand the role of social media in the lives of chronic-disease patients.
The study was conducted online among 317 psoriasis patients from the Inspire and National Psoriasis Foundation’s TalkPsoriasis community during the second quarter of 2012. Findings from the study were recently posted online and show:
Psoriasis patients are avid users of both general and psoriasis-relates social media, with 70 percent of this audience using any type of online community, social network, message board or blog at least several times a week, and 44 percent using psoriasis-specific social media multiple times per week.
Surveyed psoriasis patients say they tend to rely on communities more for practical advice related to their disease than emotional support. About 8 in 10 say they used psoriasis social media because they wanted to learn how others managed the disease as well as get tips and ideas that they couldn’t find anywhere else.
Among surveyed psoriasis patients who disagree that they have lots of support from family and friend when it comes to dealing with and managing psoriasis half say they use online communities regularly on a long-term basis, compared with just under one-third surveyed psoriasis patients who agree they have this type of support.
Moderate to severe psoriasis patients are more apt to rely on psoriasis user-generated content for emotional support than their counterparts suffering from mild forms of psoriasis. Half of the moderate to severe psoriasis patients say they use social media for connecting with others for emotional support, compared to one-third of surveyed mild psoriasis patients.
A new study from Stanford molecular and cellular physiologist Axel Brunger, PhD, and colleagues clears up a controversy in the neuroscience community by pinpointing a critical feature of the mechanism by which our nerve cells manage to talk to one another in something approaching real time. If that conversation were stuck in slo-mo, the distinction between brain and blob would vanish.
While the study is noteworthy in itself, the fact that its findings appear in the first issue of eLife, a newly launched open-access journal, rather than Science or Nature is also significant. As a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator with close to 250 peer-reviewed publications under his belt, Brunger is hardly hard-up for high-rated scientific outlets. But his experience, he tells me, has made it clear that “our peer-reviewed publication system is in a state of crisis.”
It seems other scientists feel the same. A University of Montreal study published in November concluded that the most prestigious journals were publishing fewer and fewer of the most frequently cited articles.
“For many ‘high-impact factor’ journals, initial triaging and final decisions aren’t made by active scientists,” says Brunger. “That’s not to say that these journals don’t publish excellent work, but the criteria for acceptance seem rather arbitrary and random.”
The brainchild of three heavyweight research-funding entities – HHMI, the Max Planck Society, and Wellcome Trust – eLife is not only open-access, but publication-immediately-upon-acceptance and embargo-free. (Not to mention just plain free, for both authors and readers.) Brunger’s is one of a score or so of research papers selected for eLife’s first issue, which published today.
Earlier this week, a group of health organizations, pediatricians and nutrition experts – including Stanford’s Christopher Gardner, PhD – penned a letter (.pdf) asking the kids channel Nickelodeon to be more responsible in its marketing of food. Noting that the “majority of foods marketed to children remain of poor nutritional quality,” and that Nickelodeon, “as the number one entertainment company for children… has enormous influence over children’s food choices and thus their lifelong habits and health,” they wrote:
We urge you to implement strong nutrition standards for all of the company’s food marketing to children, including all television advertising on Nickelodeon channels (including Nickelodeon, NickToons, TeenNick, and Nick Jr.), company Internet sites, mobile platforms, and other places Nickelodeon reaches children. We also urge you to strengthen your policy on the use of licensed characters by applying specific nutrition standards to their use.
If the channel and its parenting company agree to make changes, perhaps we’ll start to see more things like Dora the Explorer-branded baby carrots in stores.
I gave a presentation on blogging at the Association of American Medical Conferences’ annual meeting earlier this month, and one of my co-panelists was Bryan Vartabedian, MD. I was struck by many of the comments that Vartabedian, a pediatric gastroenterologist who has written on 33 Charts since 2009, made about physician blogging, and I followed up with some questions that I thought would interest Scope readers. Our conversation is below.
You talked at the conference about the statistics on the number of physicians who use social media often being inaccurate. Can you explain – and does this mean we don’t have a true sense of the number of physicians who blog, tweet and use Facebook on a regular basis?
One of the difficulties that come with the interpretation of physician social media stats centers on the fact that social media ‘use’ is hard to define. When we say, for example, that 20 percent of surgeons use Twitter, what does that mean? Do they use it every four months or every three hours? Does a tweet three times a year constitute use? What’s equally important to know and perhaps more difficult to identify is how doctors are using these tools. Are doctors engaging with other doctors, patients or both? How are doctors interacting with other doctors and what are they discussing or sharing?
Beyond our own observations, we have little solid data on physician social habits. It is beginning to emerge, however.
In a study published this fall by McGowan et al in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, researchers surveyed 485 physicians and found that 24.1 percent use social media daily to scan new medical information and 14.1 percent contribute information daily. On a weekly basis, 61 percent scanned and 41 percent shared content. This study also demonstrated some differences between primary care physicians and oncologists and suggests that physicians perhaps shouldn’t be broadly characterized with respect to their online habits.
What do you consider the number one impediment to blogging for doctors?
This is difficult to answer since we don’t have objective data to explain the seemingly slow adoption seen by doctors. With that said, I have my own ideas about why doctors have been slow to adopt blogging and other new media:
Naturally reservations: I think that doctors are naturally reserved with respect to their public opinions. Early on we are trained to maintain a ‘therapeutic distance’ between our patients and ourselves. This carries over to the social space where success is dependent upon our ability to narrate and share in an open way. Medicine also breeds what I call the ‘culture of permission.’ We are trained to offer an opinion only when invited. There’s a sense that we need permission in order to make ourselves heard.
Time: Good content creation takes time. Successful connection on social platforms also requires some investment in relationship building. The time necessary to see a benefit to conversation or blogging is often too much for the average doctor.
Morale: The most successful bloggers are those who are most passionate about what they do. I think it’s safe to say that medicine is in a period of transition right now and many doctors are working more for less. It’s hard to expect an internist after working a 10-hour day to spend her evening writing a creative post on hypertension.
Liability: Many doctors cite liability as a roadblock to their public presence. Most of these concerns, however, are unfounded and can be countered with the adherence to some simple guidelines.
A former colleague, also a medical writer, once told met that she liked to ask researchers during interviews to describe their work to her as if she was their elderly aunt. The answers, she said, helped her create easy-to-understand prose about oft-complicated scientific research.
I was reminded of this today when I came across a blog entry encouraging writers to challenge themselves by explaining science to another, most definitely lay audience: children. Communication Breakdown’s Matt Shipman recently did just that and writes:
I’ve thought of myself as a professional explainer for years. Whether writing about environmental policy as a reporter or writing about nanomaterials as a PIO, my job was to explain complicated issues in language that non-experts could understand. This did not prepare me for writing to an audience of kids.
Shipman’s description of his process, and a piece he wrote describing wind to children, are worth a read.
In case you haven’t yet seen it, UC-Davis professor Jonathan Eisen, PhD, and Nick Shockey, with the Right to Research Coalition, have put together an animated video on how open access – described as “free, immediate, online availability of research articles with full re-use rates” – works. Discussing the importance of open access publishing, they say:
It’s so irrational to think that scientists… are paid by the government to do research and to discover things and distribute that. And then two years of work by 20 people is going to be compressed into a paper and then not made available to people. It just doesn’t make any sense.
I’m a few days late to this, but I was intrigued by a dietician-blogger’s recent take on Pinterest, the social photo-sharing website, and its promotion of less-than-good-for-you foods. Nutrition Unplugged’s Janet writes:
…What I don’t like so much is the popularity of gooey, over-the-top desserts that dominant so many pinboards. I don’t even like the oft-used description of “food porn,” but I guess that’s what it really is.
I looked at Repinly to find the most popular food pins of all time, and guess what, it’s sugary, fad-laden creations like Oreo Layer Dessert (46,309 repins) and Butterfinger Pie (21,663 repins). Hey, I’m not against a nice dessert now and then. I have my own board of Something Sweet, among my 42 boards, which includes Whole Grains,Veggie Love, Salads I Want to Try and All About Hummus. So desserts are OK, but does the world really need more calorie bombs like these creations made with cream cheese and whipped topping. Come on, we can do better than that. Do we really need more ideas for cookie-stuffed cookies smothered in chocolate or deep-fried? I’m not the only dietitian troubled by what’s happening on Pinterest. Julie Upton over at Appetite for Health recently wrote about the same topic: “Are Pinterest recipes destroying your diet?“
Janet goes on to describe how she and a fellow blogger created a Pinterest page to provide tips and photos of “what’s healthy to eat on the web.” Because good-for-you foods can be beautiful too!
