PerspectivesHealth54 | May 2013
Campaigns in rude healththanks to social mediaUsing applications like Facebook and YouTube means we canprovide health promotion messages with humour, rather thanjust relying on static posters in GPs’ waiting rooms.”There really are massiveopportunities for increasingthe public’s engagementin health using socialmedia,” says Pr<strong>of</strong>essorPaula Ormandy, from the<strong>University</strong>’s School <strong>of</strong> Nursing, Midwifery& Social Work.” The <strong>University</strong> has a longhistory <strong>of</strong> promoting public health across theregion and Ormandy, along with her colleaguePr<strong>of</strong>essor Ben Light from the College <strong>of</strong> Arts &Social Sciences, has recently been working onawareness campaigns that have harnessed thepower <strong>of</strong> social media.Their work with Brook Manchester, a charitythat provides free and confidential sexual healthservices and advice for young people under 25,was part <strong>of</strong> a wider campaign to help reduceManchester’s high youth pregnancy rates.It looked to change the way they deliveredhealth care education for young men andinstead <strong>of</strong> relying on practical demonstrationsto show young men how to use a condom, thecampaign used a mobile phone app instead.Developed in conjunction with Brook staff andservice users, it proved a huge success. “It’sallowed Brook staff to deliver the information ina much more sensitive way, taking away much<strong>of</strong> the embarrassment,” says Light.The <strong>University</strong> has also been working withthe Lesbian and Gay Foundation (LGF) to raiseawareness about the importance <strong>of</strong> cervicalscreening for women in same sex relationshipsacross the North West <strong>of</strong> England. Suchwomen face a number <strong>of</strong> additional barriersto screening because <strong>of</strong> their sexuality, so afocused mixed media campaign was developedwith the LGF around a Hollywood ‘screen test’theme.“We found the site certainly increased people’sengagement,” says Light, “and the LGF hassince been asked to take the campaign forwardon a national basis.“Of course there are lots <strong>of</strong> digital campaignspromoting health but what’s innovative aboutthis project is that it embedded an evaluationmechanism into it so that we could constantlyaudit its performance, and change things if theyweren't working or became tired.”The <strong>University</strong>’s biggest, and current, campaignis The Cat That Got the Screen. Commissionedby the NHS Cervical Screening Quality AssuranceReference Centre in the North West, it aims toencourage 24-29 year olds to go for a cervicalscreen, and pushes the message that earlydetection is critical.What’s innovativeabout this project isthat it embedded anevaluation mechanisminto it so that we couldconstantly audit itsperformance.The campaign was developed in collaborationwith students from the School <strong>of</strong> Arts & Media,the project team and women in the campaign’starget age group.As Light explains, the ads are designed to getpeople talking about, and engaging with,cervical screening. It rests on the internet‘meme culture’ (a concept that spreads fromperson to person via the internet) and engagesseriously with ideas <strong>of</strong> user-generated contentand user participation.As the campaign moves forward it will, forexample, deploy short promotional videos,mash-ups <strong>of</strong> cat images (because funnycat pictures are some <strong>of</strong> the most viral andmost searched for on the internet), andan app to allow users to create their ownhealth education promotional materials –‘the Mogatron.’ The campaign also uses amonitoring system called Brandwatch alongsideother s<strong>of</strong>tware such as Google Analytics tocollect real-time evaluation data.Maria Rossall-Allan, the campaign’s project<strong>of</strong>ficer, explains: “Such an approach allowsyou to see who’s talking about the topic youare campaigning about online and then followup those links, to push the campaign withintargeted groups.”And word has spread about the innovativenature <strong>of</strong> the projects, with extra fundingnow coming from Heywood, Middleton andRochdale Primary Care Trust, to create atargeted cervical screening campaign for ethnicminority communities.Ormandy can see many other applications forthe technology and is currently working withCristina Vasilica, a PhD student at the <strong>University</strong>,who is developing a new interactive patient hubfor people with chronic kidney disease.“Like the cervical campaigns, it places a hugeemphasis on interaction, encouraging peopleto leave their own comments about theirexperience so the site actually starts to generateits own content, rather than simply relying onthe words <strong>of</strong> health care pr<strong>of</strong>essionals,”she adds.May 2013 | 55