Tag Archives: Pew Internet

How should a youth-focused sexual health clinic incorporate social media and SMS into their work?

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Continuing my series of public Q&A sessions, I’ll share the following:

We are working on an innovation concept paper to a local foundation and would like to explore how to better use social media and SMS at youth-focused sexual health clinic. We need to be able clearly articulate the benefits of social media and SMS for health care access for youth and young adults. I hope you can provide some resources that may be able to help.

I began with basics:

Pew Internet: Teens

Pew Internet: Health

Pew Internet Trend Data: Adults

Pew Internet Trend Data: Teens

Digging deeper:

The most recent report on Teens and Technology and the most recent in-depth report on Health Online.

And finally, some blog posts relating most closely to your inquiry:

Going Viral Against HIV

The State of New Media and HIV

Health, Technology, and Communities of Color

You might consider texting as a mode of communication – don’t miss the discussion in the comments on this post:

Is there hope for SMS health alerts?

(Now it’s your turn: what would YOU share? What advice do you have for this newcomer to social media? Comments are open.)

Tracking for Health: Detailed Demographics

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In response to popular demand, my Pew Research colleagues and I posted detailed demographic tables for the “Tracking for Health” study.

I should warn you: These are not pretty tables. You may need a ruler to keep track of the rows and columns since we crammed as much data into each table as possible. But I think they will be useful and that, to me, is a high compliment (right after “thoughtful” — that’s the best). Continue reading →

A mirror and a window

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Woman looking out a train window by BjArn Giesenbauer on FlickrI’ve been thinking about the role of the Pew Research Center* in the world, particularly in regard to how we communicate and disseminate our work.

Here is my idea:

We are both a mirror and a window.

We hold up a mirror to society, reflecting back the current state of all sorts of things, like marriage, immigration, social media, and religion. We don’t tell you what to do about any aspect of it. We just want you to see yourself as you really are. Continue reading →

2012 Health Survey Data

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Calculator by josef stuefer on FlickrThanks to multiple requests, and our hope to be useful and responsive to our audience, the Pew Research Center posted a preliminary version of the September 2012 health survey data. Please note that this version includes the topline, questionnaire, CSV file, and SPSS file. Here’s an explanation of our data resources if you have questions about how to access these files. We will upload the full cross-tabs later this spring, after the publication of our final report based on this survey.

This survey has served as the basis for the following reports:

Mobile Health 2012

Health Online 2013

Tracking for Health

I would love to hear about any revelations (or publications) that result. You can send email (sfox at pewinternet dot org) or a tweet (@SusannahFox). Or post a comment below if you want to publicly share what you find.

As always, thanks to my colleagues at the Pew Research Center and the California HealthCare Foundation for their support for this research.

Join a discussion about “Tracking for Health”

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“When our observations about ourselves are formally collected, rather than just remembered, it’s easier to get advice and comment, and to improve our reasoning with the help of others. ‘Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down,’ said Adam Savage of Mythbusters. Technology helps us write it down.”

- Ernesto Ramirez, writing on the Quantified Self blog about “Tracking for Health.” Please join us there for a discussion of the findings!

2 down, 3 to go

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I’m doing a ton of “day job” writing these days, analyzing survey data about how Americans gather, share, and create health information. Here is a rundown of the reports released so far and what’s coming up:

1) Mobile Health 2012 (Nov. 8, 2012) 85% of U.S. adults own a cell phone and, of those, 31% have looked up health information on their phone. Tracking smartphone ownership is key — half have looked up health info and one-fifth have a health app. Here are some mobile-related posts, in case you missed those discussions.

2) Health Online 2013: (Jan. 15, 2013) This is the big general-population report. New findings include: 35% of U.S. adults have gone online specifically to figure out what they or someone else might have; 26% of people looking online for health info have hit a pay wall (and very few pay). The e-patients.net discussion is off to a great start.

3) Tracking for Health: (Jan. 28, 2013) Health Data Tracking (working title; scheduled for release during the week of Jan. 28). 7 in 10 U.S. adults track their weight, diet, exercise routine, or other health indicator. But few use technology to do so. I previewed the basic findings here but the report will dive deep into the demographics, including caregivers and people living with chronic conditions.

4) Caregivers (February). All the questions covered in prior 3 reports, through the filter of people who are actively caring for a loved one, plus some new questions focused only on how the internet informs caregivers’ experiences. It will serve as an update of the Family Caregivers Online report based on a 2010 survey.

5) People living with chronic conditions (March). All the questions covered in prior reports, through the filter of people living with chronic conditions. The closest correlates in our archives are Chronic Disease and the Internet, based on a 2008 survey, and Peer-to-peer Healthcare, based on a 2010 survey.

All of this research is supported by a grant from the California HealthCare Foundation and, of course, the Pew Research Center. Can’t wait to share all that we’ve learned!

(If you have a particular interest in any of the upcoming reports, and promise not to share the results before we publish them, please email me directly and I’ll add you to the preview list: sfox at pewinternet dot org)

Research, writing, and the public conversation

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I’m crunching survey data nonstop these days, writing two reports to be published in January, so I’m not leaving my writing cave office very often.

But before I went into quiet mode, I recorded a podcast with Fran Melmed and Carol Harnett, hosts of the CoHealth Checkup. They elicited some stories I haven’t told elsewhere and I talked about some of the new data coming out of Pew Internet’s 2012 health survey.

Listen to internet radio with CoHealth Checkup on Blog Talk Radio

I also talked about a trend that I hope is going to catch on: researchers taking  responsibility for the translation and spread of their insights to the public, as H. Gilbert Welch does in this video:

 

Go mobile

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In 2008, I summarized Pew Internet’s health findings in 7 words of wisdom:

Recruit doctors. Let e-patients lead. Go mobile.*

Four years later, I’m banging the same drum, but with even more data to back it up. The market for mobile-ready health information continues to grow, even as health apps are just simmering along (in terms of consumer adoption, anyway). Continue reading →