Which universities around the world are offering courses on public health and social media? Do you have case studies about the use of social media to promote public health?
Please send any such details to the public health academics below…
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Making new media part of public health training
Becky Freeman writes:
There is no question that the Internet and social media are being used in creative and innovative ways to both promote and harm public health.
As the research literature slowly grows to try and catch up with this global phenomenon, it is essential that academics incorporate these findings into public health training programs.
Simon Chapman and I will be coordinating a new course offered through the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney, which will provide students with valuable skills and insights in to how new media influence the public health agenda. Naturally, we are very excited about this opportunity and hope that students find it both engaging and informative.
As this is a new course, we are interested in knowing what, if any, new media topics other public health academics and schools include in their courses.
For example, perhaps you include a lecture on how mobile phones are being used to implement community vaccination programs, or you have an exercise where students are required to blog on a health issue of their choice.
Obviously, we all use multimedia and online tools and sources within our courses, but if you specifically include content on the use of new media and its impact on public health in your courses, we would be very appreciative if you could share this with us.
Or perhaps your university offers a similar course to the one we are now offering and you would be happy to share your course outline or materials.
In the spirit of open collaboration, please share any content in the comments below, or tag us on Twitter.
To sum up, we are looking for:
- Public health and new media courses that are taught in other universities
- Examples of new media and public health used in your university courses
- Public health and new media case studies that we should highlight in our course
• Becky Freeman is a Public Health Lecturer and Researcher at the University of Sydney. Her research interests include tobacco control, obesity and the impact of new media on health. You can follow her on Twitter @no_smoking_chik
Quite a few general social media courses are run out of comms departments at various universities, I’ve even taught in a few. Do you think a public health focus is important? I’m not asking rhetorically – a broader comms approach is often helpful in my experience.
Hi Ben,
I really do – the focus of social media courses from a comms departments would have a, naturally, comms focus. Our course is specifically for public health practitioners and researchers, so that social media tools can be incorporated into their everyday work, especially in terms of advocacy and agenda setting. We see this as a real gap in currnet public health training and practice. Also, because our public health degree is also a graduate degree, it is not a generalist knowledge course which might be more suitable for undergrads.