Use of #SaludTues Tweetchats for the Dissemination of Culturally Relevant Information on Latino Health Equity: Exploratory Case Study

Abstract

Background Latinx people comprise 18% of the US adult population and a large share of youth and continue to experience inequities that perpetuate health disparities. To engage Latinx people in advocacy for health equity based on this population’s heavy share of smartphone, social media, and Twitter users, Salud America! launched the #SaludTues Tweetchat series. In this paper, we explore the use of #SaludTues to promote advocacy for Latinx health equity. Objective This study aims to understand how #SaludTues Tweetchats are used to promote dissemination of culturally relevant information on social determinants of health, to determine whether tweetchats serve to drive web traffic to the Salud America! website, and to understand who participates in #SaludTues Tweetchats and what we can learn about the participants. We also aim to share our own experiences and present a step-by-step guide of how tweetchats are planned, developed, promoted, and executed. Methods We explored tweetchat data collected between 2014 and 2018 using Symplur and Google Analytics to identify groups of stakeholders and web traffic. Network analysis and mapping tools were also used to derive insights from this series of chats. Results We conducted 187 chats with 24,609 reported users, 177,466 tweets, and more than 1.87 billion impressions using the hashtag #SaludTues during this span, demonstrating effective dissemination of and exposure to culturally relevant information. Traffic to the Salud America! website was higher on Tuesdays than any other day of the week, suggesting that #SaludTues Tweetchats acted effectively as a website traffic–driving tool. Most participants came from advocacy organizations (165/1000, 16.5%) and other health care–related organizations (162/1000, 16.2%), whereas others were unknown users (147/1000, 14.7%) and individual users outside of the health care sector (117/1000, 11.7%). The majority of participants were located in Texas, California, New York, and Florida, all states with high Latinx populations. Conclusions Carefully planned, culturally relevant tweetchats such as #SaludTues can be a powerful tool for public health practitioners and advocates to engage audiences on Twitter around health issues, advocacy, and policy solutions for Latino health equity. Further information is needed to determine the effect that #SaludTues Tweetchats have on self- and collective efficacy for advocacy in the area of Latino health equity.

The Experiences of Stakeholders Using Social Media as a Tool for Health Service Design and Quality Improvement: A Scoping Review

“…The most common benefit relating to organisational communication was that using social media as a tool within health service design and QI activities improves the efficiency of communication [ 37 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 45 , 46 , 48 , 49 , 51 , 52 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 62 , 63 , 66 , 68 , 69 , 71 , 73 , 74 , 77 , 80 , 82 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 92 , 95 ]. Communication efficiency was improved through increasing the speed of communication [ 41 , 42 , 45 , 54 , 57 , 62 , 63 , 69 , 73 , 82 , 92 ], reducing barriers to face-to-face communication (such as people being in different locations or doing shift work) [ 37 , 85 , 86 , 92 ], and increasing the number of people reached [ 40 , 42 , 45 , 46 ...…”

“…Additional channel for communication. Social media provides an additional channel for communication [ 37 , 48 , 49 , 51 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 58 , 59 , 65 , 66 , 73 , 80 , 84 ]. As well as simply being another way to reach audiences [ 48 , 54 , 58 , 80 , 84 ], this additional channel is used for gathering information about service quality alongside more traditional methods such as patient surveys [ 49 , 55 , 56 , 65 , 66 ] and supporting or enhancing offline engagement [ 48 , 59 , 73 ].…”

“…Social media provides an additional channel for communication [ 37 , 48 , 49 , 51 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 58 , 59 , 65 , 66 , 73 , 80 , 84 ]. As well as simply being another way to reach audiences [ 48 , 54 , 58 , 80 , 84 ], this additional channel is used for gathering information about service quality alongside more traditional methods such as patient surveys [ 49 , 55 , 56 , 65 , 66 ] and supporting or enhancing offline engagement [ 48 , 59 , 73 ]. Norman et al [ 73 ] observed that this ‘additional channel’ benefit could apply to consumers as well as organisations, finding that the young people involved in their study used their involvement in service design activities as a starting point for building their broader online presence.…”

Social Media, Digital Health Literacy, and Digital Ethics in the Light of Health Equity

“…The factors impacting on health equity reported in the included papers were extracted and grouped into three categories: digital health literacy; digital ethics; and acceptability. Digital ethics was the most common category addressed in the included papers (N=10) [9,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19], followed by acceptability, which was included in seven studies [9,10,18,[20][21][22][23]. Digital health literacy was addressed in four of the included papers [9,10,19,24].…”

Equitable Representation of Latinos in Clinical Research Is Needed to Achieve Health Equity in Cancer Care

“…also engages community and health care stakeholders via #SaludTues tweetchats on CT-related topics; tweetchats are a once-a-month, hour-long discussion series on Twitter, which have proven to be a powerful tool for public health practitioners and advocates to engage audiences on Twitter around health issues, advocacy, and policy solutions for Latino health equity. 64 Other studies have proven successful in improving recruitment of hard-to-reach populations into research by using Facebook advertising that used culturally appropriate graphics and messages on its target audience's preferred platform. 62,65 A similar example included targeted advertisement developed on the basis of users' online behavior, interests, and connection.…”