Connecting the Dots: Using Social Media to Measure Behavior Change In Public Health Immunization Campaigns

Background: Public health communicators have found it difficult to show that communication interventions result in behavior change at an individual level. In most cases, intermediate outcomes such as click-through-rates, “likes” or retweets” are used to show progress, with the assumption that these intermediate outcomes will lead to the desired long term change. Social media offer robust real-time tracking and data collection tools that can be used to measure long-term behavior change. This presentation will describe digital media strategies used in two public health immunization communication campaigns, how these strategies were selected to match the communication preferences of the target audiences, evaluation measures, and results. 

Setting: Social media websites

Population: At-risk target audiences

Project Description: Two online health communication campaigns will be used to demonstrate different strategies for measuring behavior change using social media metrics. The first campaign, aimed at a more general audience, used online media and pre- and post-campaign surveys to measure changes in awareness and intention to engage in a health behavior. The second—a campaign aimed at a range of at-risk audiences, including pregnant women, older adults, and chronic disease sufferers—used a social networking website to organize people online and mobilize them to take action offline, thus making health behavior a tangible outcome of the campaign. 

Results/Lessons Learned: Results from both campaigns demonstrate successful achievement of the campaign goals. In addition, the first campaign was able to measure changes in intention, which is a required precursor to behavior change. The second campaign was able to directly impact people’s behaviors by connecting the online and offline worlds.  For public health practitioners, these powerful results demonstrate a direct correlation between social media and impact on key determinants of behavior. Ultimately, the availability of these media channels move public health practitioners one step closer to the ultimate goal of measuring a campaign’s success in changing behavior.