Health professionals play an integral role in reducing the global burden of disease by working to prevent or improve poor health.
A key part of this is promoting healthful behaviours that will reduce health risks over time. Communication beyond one-to-one or group consultations can be a key tool for health professionals. When used effectively, communication strategies can support behaviour changes that improve health in the community.
Research conducted by the Communicating Health project aims to understand the use of social media and create strategies and tools for health professionals to use social media channels to motivate, engage and retain audiences with health messages.
Communicating Health is funded by the NHMRC and is a joint project of Monash University, RMIT University, the University of Queensland, the Burnet Institute, the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services, Cancer Council Victoria, Nutrition Australia and VicHealth.
The project brings together academic experts in social marketing, consumer psychology, nutrition science and dietetics to gain better insights into social media habits and behaviours, costs and methods to optimise engagement, retention and impact on health behaviour.
The study protocol focused on understanding social media use by young adults aged 18 – 24 years. However, as social media is a channel that is used across all age groups, the insights and strategies developed as a part of the Communicating Health project can be adapted for a wide variety of audiences.
