Reaching Latinos with Health Information in the Age of Digital Marketing

Background: Despite being one of the youngest and fastest growing minority groups in the U.S, Latinos face health disparities in obesity and certain cancers. Currently, 39% of U.S. Latino children are overweight vs. 29% of non-Latino white children. Environmental factors such as the lack of access to safe places to play, fresh fruits and vegetables, health care, and health care coverage, as well as the ubiquity of sugary drinks and the early introduction of solid foods to infants, are often at the root of such disparities. While most health programs have focused on individual behavioral change far fewer have aimed to create change at the environmental level. Mass media communication by way of social media has the potential to serve as a cost effective mechanism for reaching Latinos with important health messages aimed at driving environmental and systemic changes. In 2012, 78% of Latinos were using the Internet— primarily from their cell phone—and 68% of Latino Internet users were on one or more social media networks (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest). More recently, content curation of online health information combined with a robust digital marketing strategy, has risen as a prominent way to engage Latinos in conversations centered around creating community-wide changes to improve population health.

Program background: In 2013, Salud America! the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Network to Prevent Latino Childhood Obesity (SA!) launched a new effort to expand the reach of its network to parents, students, teachers, community members and stakeholders with an interest in taking action to create healthier communities. An on-line, membership based platform with resources and geo-tagged news updates provides members with one stop shop for locating policies, stories, and research on Latino childhood obesity. Content for the site is curated and disseminated daily on social media (@SaludToday). Weekly #SaludTues tweetchats and #SaludLive live stream broadcasts are organized to stimulate conversations on Latino health disparities and solutions to childhood obesity. Monthly campaigns, petitions, and video voting contests are organized in collaboration with partner organizations to drive platform registrations and audience engagement.  

Evaluation Methods and Results: With an average of 9 million potential impressions and a reach of over 800,000, weekly tweetchats have emerged as a successful strategy for content dissemination as well as audience engagement. Periodic action campaigns have also led to increased activity on the SA! online platform.

Conclusions: By leveraging the power of social media Salud America! has been able to increase exposure to important health information available in the form of multimedia resources such as animated videos, infographics, and role model stories. Further work in this area is needed to determine how social media might serve to reduce health disparities and prevent chronic disease. 

Implications for research and/or practice: Researchers and public health professionals have the potential to reach and engage a wide array of Latinos through social media networks. Social media marketing can also serve to develop relationships and strategies with organizations that share common interests.