Faculty/Staff Daily Digest

A theme throughout this year's conference will be the role of social connectedness in health and ways we can leverage the metaverse to strengthen social ties, social support, and tilt social norms toward healthy choices, healthy lifestyles, and healthy communities.

Our conference will feature keynote speakers and panelists who are studying and innovating tools of the metaverse, including social media, virtual reality, and digital technologies to help us connect in ways that solve health problems. Topics including opportunities and challenges in how public health can better utilize social media & moderation of large health-focused Facebook groups will be discussed and debated.

Keynote speakers include:

Lorien Abroms, ScD, MA, Professor of Prevention and Community Health; Associate Dean for PhD & MS Programs, Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University
@lorien_a

Julianne Holt-Lunstad, PhD, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Brigham Young University
@jholtlunstad

Risa B. Weisberg, PhD, Chief Clinical Officer, BehaVR; Professor of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine; Adjunct Professor of Family Medicine, Alpert Medical School of Brown University; Fellow, Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies; Scientific Council, Anxiety and Depression Association of America
@dr_weisberg

The conference will feature two panel discussions as well, the first featuring a discussion on opportunities and challenges in how public health can better utilize social media & the second featuring a discussion on moderation of large health-focused Facebook groups.

Panel 1: How Can Public Health Better Utilize Social Media? Challenges and Opportunities

In this panel, three highly accomplished social media researchers will reflect on how we can advance public health via social media. While social media platforms often to blame for health misinformation, FOMO, depression, anxiety, and a host of other issues, we hear far less about ways these platforms are being used to advance public health. This panel will discuss their work leveraging social media for cancer prevention, vaccine acceptance, healthy lifestyle, and more, and they will reflect on both the challenges and opportunities to using social media as an important tool for promoting public health.

Panelists include:

Y. Alicia Hong, PhD, Professor, Department of Health Administration and Policy, College of Public Health, George Mason University

David Buller, PhD, Senior Scientist and Director of Research, Klein Buendel, Inc.

Eleni Linos MD, MPH, DrPH, Professor of Dermatology and Epidemiology, Stanford University

Panel 2: Discussion with Moderators of Large Health-Focused Facebook Groups

A vast ecosystem of patient communities exists on Facebook on almost any health topic you can imagine from diabetes to rare cancers. These communities are typically started by patients, led by patients, and attract thousands of patients around the world. In this panel we will hear from moderators of these communities who will reflect on why they started the community, the value of the community to them and their community members, and how we can create community-academic partnerships.

Panelists to be announced.

The conference will feature two optional workshops as described below. 

Workshop: Managing Engagement Data from Facebook Delivered Interventions
In this workshop, participants will learn the complex process of how to collect, extract, and manage engagement data from interventions delivered in private Facebook groups. The workshop will cover how to use Grytics (engagement data extraction software), how to process the data from Grytics to Redcap to SPSS, and how to summarize and analyze the data in manuscript. This workshop will focus on producing individual-level engagement data, which are not accessible on Facebook insights, to gain a deeper understanding of intervention effect.

Workshop: How to Use Facebook to Deliver a Health Promotion Intervention
In this workshop, participants will learn how to convert their intervention protocols for delivery in private Facebook groups. The workshop will cover: converting traditional intervention content into social media posts, developing and maintaining a content library, understanding platform norms, creating an engagement protocol, branding and design, and lessons learned.

Submit an abstract here. 

Register here.