HHS New Media Blog

Synergy: Making the Most of your Digital Assets

At the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, we are learning that digital channels are most effective when they work together. When various online properties cross-promote one another, they create a synergy that maximizes impact beyond what can achieved through a single channel, thus allowing us to communicate with larger audiences, which furthers our mission.

NIAID’s Life Cycle of the Malaria Parasite image provides an example.

This medical illustration describes the life cycle of the mosquito-borne parasite that causes and transmits malaria. The image was launched on the NIAID website in January, 2008. When NIAID launched its Flickr photostream in October, 2010, the malaria life cycle illustration was included.

Over time, we began to notice that the Life Cycle of the Malaria Parasite illustration on the NIAID website was viewed with increasing frequency. We wondered why this illustration was becoming so popular, when we had not actively promoted it. Flickr statistics showed that this is the second-most viewed image on the NIAID Flickr site, with 584 lifetime views in mid-February, 2012. That seemed like a respectable number, but not large enough to account for the increased views on the public website. So, we did a little more investigation.

The Life cycle of the Malaria Parasite image has been on the NIAID Flickr channel for approximately 16 months.

• In the 16 months preceding its launch on Flickr, the image had been viewed 4,782 times on the NIAID website.
• In the 16 months after the launch, it was viewed 56,370 times on the website.
• This is an increase of 1,079%!

This increase, while astonishing, was also mysterious. Although it seemed that the availability of the image on Flickr was likely a major factor, the 584 views of the image on Flickr could not directly account for the more than 56,000 on the site during the same time period. Further, referrals to the image on the website were primarily from search engines and not from Flickr.

Further investigation revealed that actions we had taken on both Flickr and the NIAID site supported making the image more findable. As visitors found and used the image, others became more aware of its existence. As awareness increased, more people searched for the image; used it; distributed it; and perpetuated the cycle of building awareness, searches and views.

During the months that followed the Flickr launch, two simultaneous efforts were undertaken. We embarked on a project to tag Flickr images so that would rank highly in Flickr searches. As a result, a search on the term malaria displayed the Life cycle of the Malaria Parasite on the first page of Flickr search results. A search on the specific term malaria life cycle displayed the image as the first result.

At the same time, NIAID was improving search engine optimization on its website. Due to this effort, a Google search on the term malaria life cycle resulted in Life Cycle of the Malaria Parasite appearing as the first result on the Google page.  In fact, referring searches to the NIAID website for variations of the term malaria life cycle have increased by over 500% since the image was launched in Flickr. The term malaria life cycle is now one of the top ten referring terms to the entire website.

The example of the Life Cycle of the Malaria Parasite illustration demonstrates that digital channels work best when they work together. As the image gained exposure through multiple channels, it was used and distributed, leading to increased awareness. Increased awareness leads to more searches, which in turn leads to greater exposure.

This type of cross-platform synergy makes the most of your digital assets.

Facebook Timeline for Pages

6 Things to Know About the Switch

On March 30, 2012, all Facebook Pages were automatically switched over to the new Timeline design. Use the tips, tricks, and resources below to make sure that your Page is prepared.

The Timeline creates dynamic new way for you to tell your story and interact with users who visit your Page. Instead of a just a second stream of news to complement your RSS feed, blog, or Twitter – Pages break new ground by creating a fun and interactive experience that is easy to manage and use.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. Admin Panel & Activity Log

The Admin Panel helps you run the show. In the past, the information was scattered across several screens and hard to find. Now everything that you need to manage your Page is front and center. You can view Page Insights, Notifications, and Messages right at the top of your Page when you are logged in. An added bonus is the Activity Log which provides you with quick way to see everything that has been posted to your Page. This section will also allow you to see if a post received likes, comments, or has been featured by a Page Admin.

2. Started Date & About

The first thing you should do is set a “Started, Founded, Born…” date. This will anchor your timeline in the past. Your start date must include a day. Ex.  1776 - July - 4.
Once you set this up, you will not be able to post Timeline Milestones or anything else earlier than this date.  Make sure you update and utilize the About section. This is prime screen real estate that you can use to introduce your Page to the world.

3. Cover Photo

The Cover Photo will be the key visual element similar to a billboard image on a website. There’s no default landing Tab anymore.  

* Do: Use a compelling photo that illustrates your mission.
* Don’t: Use an image that has your URL, a call to action, instructions to Like This Page.

4. Profile Photo and Custom App Photos

Your old Profile Photo might not cut it anymore. New profile pics must be square. On the plus side, you have more control over your Tabs – and by the way they’re called “Apps” now. You can customize the order, the App name, and most importantly the App image. But you can’t move the Photos App and it displays the most recent photo that you uploaded or posted to your Timeline.

5. Featured Content

Make your posts pop. Facebook is now a visual medium and you can “Star” or highlight posts to make them more prominent. This will display images and videos in widescreen and it will make your timeline much more appealing.  You can also “Pin” posts to the top of your Timeline for up to a week. These tools are very effective and can keep visitors coming back.

6. Travel Back in Time

The genius of the Timeline is that it gives you the ability to weave your program or agency’s history into the Page. And it allows you to back fill your Timeline with important content - just use the small clock icon to set a date on status updates, photos, or milestones. You can choose whether or not to display these updates in the News Feed. Now you can go back and fill in the gaps to create a seamless user experience from start to finish.

See the Timeline in Action

• HealthCare.gov Facebook Timeline : We switched this page over on Friday March 16^th and have seen user engagement skyrocket.
• At HHS, the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps  and StopBullying.gov  were early adopters. Down the street, the Department of Education  is using it too.
• On the other side of the Potomac, the Coast Guard , Army , Navy , Marines , and Air Force  started using the timeline ahead of schedule.
• Some well-known brands have already switched earlier this year. You can see other examples showcased by Facebook .

Crash Course & Cheat Sheet

If you have waited until the last minute…

1. Update your Cover Photo
2. Update your About info and Started/Founded/Born Date
3. Update your Profile Photo

Facebook Resources

Links to non-federal websites below…

• Pages Overview Guide  (PDF – 1.81 MB)
• Pages Product Guide  (PDF – 3.47 MB)
• Interactive Course: Learn About Facebook Pages 
• Video: Customizing Your Page 
• Video: Controlling Posts on Your Page 

What do you think about the new Facebook Page design and the Timeline? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Anthony Calabrese is a Program Analyst. His full office location acronym is HHS/OS/ASPA/WCD Learn more About Us.

Bring FDA Tobacco Content to Your Website

FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products just launched a new service that allows you to easily add our web content to your site. The content blends into your site’s look and feel, giving your site visitors a seamless experience, while providing high-quality content you don’t have to create, update, or maintain.

Get started syndicating tobacco information from FDA today!

FDA invested in content syndication to meet the growing demand for health-related web content. FDA benefits from syndication by reaching new audiences and increasing exposure to these important public health messages. The websites displaying FDA’s content gain free, high quality web content without losing visitors by linking to outside websites. Syndication is particularly attractive to organizations with limited resources, such as state and local health departments and non-profit or advocacy organizations.

What Content Can You Syndicate

With more than 40 web pages currently available, you can provide your website visitors with information on:

• The Tobacco Control Act
• Retailer education information and resources
• Guidance and regulations from FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products
• Tobacco packaging and advertising
• State and local tobacco resources

Why Syndicate FDA Tobacco Content?

There are many reasons to syndicate free tobacco content from FDA.gov, including:

• Access to high-quality content, increasing the value of your website with little time or effort on your part.
• Less time to develop, maintain, and update content on your site--let FDA do this for you.
• Instead of linking to FDA.gov, you can keep your web visitors on your Internet or Intranet sites and still provide them with useful, relevant, and timely tobacco information from FDA.gov.

How Do I Get Started?

There are several resources to get you started including a “Help” page and a Frequently Asked Questions page. These tools will guide you through the process from registration to syndication, and can answer most of your questions.

Visit http://tools.fda.gov to get started.

Browse the site and get familiar with the many ways to find content.

When you are ready, simply sign up, choose the content, and copy and paste our web code onto your website.

 More Information

What is Content Syndication?
How Does Content Syndication Work?
Report a Problem with a Syndicated Page

Michael Murray is a Health Communication Specialist. His full office location acronym is HHS/FDA/CTP/OHCE/DCNM Learn more About Us.

Online Privacy and Web 2.0 @ HHS

The President has designated October as National Cyber Security Awareness Month, and the theme for this year is “Our Shared Responsibility.” The Federal government has had a culture of privacy for decades, going back to at least the Privacy Act of 1974. One of the key foundations of this culture is that any use of technology should be assessed to determine the impact, whether directly or indirectly, to privacy. While many claim that these types of restrictions stifle innovation – these practices also ensure that information about the public and individual privacy is protected when they interact with their government.  Every week Facebook, Apple, or other Web 2.0 affiliated companies find themselves the subject of news articles about provocative use of personal information. Protecting privacy is particularly important for HHS, where we often deal with sensitive health issues. While we want to encourage citizens to engage, we also want to protect them from disclosing too much about their health conditions, medical history, or other personally identifiable information.

Key policy makers within the Federal government at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) are encouraging government agencies to embrace new technologies. While encouraging agencies to use social media and other technologies to reach constituents and support an Open Government, OMB has also emphasized the need to protect privacy and has identified strict requirements for using third-party Websites and applications, including providing clear notice when using web measurement and customization tools on Federal Websites.

Two key OMB guidance documents, OMB M-10-22, “Guidance on Agency Use of Web Measurement and Customization Technologies” and OMB M-10-23, “Guidance for Agency Use of Third-Party Websites and Applications” recently passed their first anniversary. The first targets Federal Websites and their use of cookies and other Web measurement and customization tools, while the second targets the use of external or third-party Websites  or applications (including social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc).

While emerging technologies may bring new privacy challenges, it is important that the Department is transparent about its privacy practices and is in compliance with OMB guidance. HHS supports the responsible use of emerging technologies, and we encourage all managers of new media accounts to honor their shared responsibility by taking the time to consider and understand the possible privacy implications of engaging over third party websites and applications. The HHS Cybersecurity Program has worked closely with the HHS New Media community to solicit input on the implementation of the previously mentioned OMB memos, and members of the Web community should reach out to their privacy counterparts to become aware of the key requirements for compliance with the latest OMB guidance. The HHS Cybersecurity Program strives to provide useful and relevant guidance, so we encourage you to review the Implementation Memorandum for OMB M-10-22 and M-10-23.

If you have specific questions, please contact the HHS Cybersecurity Program at HHS.Cybersecurity
@hhs.gov or visit us on the Web at http://www.hhs.gov/ocio/securityprivacy/index.html.

Mark Brown is the HHS Senior Information Security Officer and the OS Senior Official for Privacy. His full office location acronym is HHS/OS/ASA/OCIO.

Would you like to play a game? Solving real problems using game mechanics.

I’ll start by being upfront. I am not a gamer. The last video game I played with any passion or level of addiction was Frogger. I never even really got into Tetris. I do know enough gamers to be able to say “The Cake is a Lie” and know that will win me a special place in their hearts.

The concept of using game mechanics to solve real world problems was a big one at SXSW this past March, with Keynote speaker Seth Priebatsch  speaking about it in-depth. So I was particularly excited to see a recent news release from the University of Washington describing how in 3 weeks gamers were able to “produce an accurate model of the enzyme” whose “configuration had stumped scientists for more than a decade”.  “This class of enzymes, called retroviral proteases, has a critical role in how the AIDS virus matures and proliferates. Intensive research is under way to try to find anti-AIDS drugs that can block these enzymes, but efforts were hampered by not knowing exactly what the retroviral protease molecule looks like.”

This is an example of crowdsourcing, collaboration, game mechanics and social networking at its best. Instead of doing each of these activities in isolation, these elements were brought together as a powerful tool to solve a real world problem.  “The researchers noted that much attention has been given to the possibilities of crowd-sourcing and game playing in scientific discovery. Their results indicate the potential for integrating online video games into real-world science.”

Frequently the value of social networking is questioned, and at times it appears we may just be doing it because we think we need to in order to keep up with the Agency next door. Perhaps we need to take these baby steps and lessons learned and start combining some of our efforts with social networking, collaboration and challenges to solve a big problem rather than just, for example, producing videos on a public health topic or posting news releases to our facebook pages. We’re succeeding with using these tools for communications needs, let’s start applying what we’ve learned to solving other problems beyond communications. These activities certainly have their own merit, but perhaps we can stretch a little further.

What will it take for us to “Level Up” ?

The Fold-it game used by the researchers at the University of Washington shows it can be done and have incredible results. What if we broadened our thinking on what collaboration means? Instead of just providing a “collaboration area” for researchers to share information and documents, what if we broke open the space by combining collaboration, challenges, crowdsourcing and social networking, using game mechanics to encourage all kinds of people to contribute to the resolution of real research problems?

What if we focused not just on researchers and scientists collaborating together but provided mechanisms for gamers and scientists to come together, like University of Washington has done with the Center for Game Sciences working with Dr. David Baker’s biochemistry lab to create the Fold-it game? We should look closely at the model used by the University of Washington researchers and see how we can extend it to our own research efforts in the government. We’ll need to identify the barriers that are inherent in government work and work through those barriers so we can use the collective brainpower that is out there.

We can see further examples in the gaming community itself. The lead developer I work with on producing new web site functionality for NIAID, Jake Jester, described to me how Valve Software held a real life gaming event for the release of the new Portal 2 game. Clues were scattered in a set of 15 games that were released in one special bundle, providing clues to the upcoming released date of the Portal 2 game, rewarding players with early access to the game based on their contributions to solving the puzzles.

 “Some of these puzzles were incredibly difficult, and spanned a wide variety of disciplines from advanced mathematics, to audio and video codec mastery, to advanced cryptography puzzles. The community ate it up. There were thousands and thousands of people working on it at once, smashing through the puzzles one at a time. It was incredibly fun and illustrates the amount of untapped brain and computing power just sitting out there.”  Couple this enthusiasm for solving puzzles and games with the success demonstrated by the Fold-it game and we see a barely tapped community that is interested and capable of solving puzzles that result in real science advances.

In cases where we have the basics of social/new media covered, let’s keep advancing and level up to thinking about game mechanics as another tool in our problem solving toolbox.  Not only can we apply the idea of gaming to our citizen engagement strategies on the communications level, but perhaps we can pave the way in helping others see the value in applying game mechanics to their own areas of responsibility. 

References:

1. Firas Khatib, Frank DiMaio, Seth Cooper, Maciej Kazmierczyk, Miroslaw Gilski, Szymon Krzywda, Helena Zabranska, Iva Pichova, James Thompson, Zoran Popović, Mariusz Jaskolski, David Baker. Crystal structure of a monomeric retroviral protease solved by protein folding game players. Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, 2011; DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.2119
2. Molecular structure of retrovirus enzyme solved, doors open to new AIDS drug design. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 19, 2011, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110918144955.htm

Tori Garten is Chief, New Media and Web Policy Branch in the Office of Communications and Government Relations at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The full office location acronym is HHS/NIH/NIAID/OCGR/NMWPB.

The Social Side of Health Care

As the dog days of summer start to wind down, I thought it might be a good time to review a recent report from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project (Pew Internet). In addition, I would like to highlight some tips for navigating the Pew datasets.

In May, the Pew Internet released “The Social Life of Health Information 2011” a report that focuses on mobile health, the health information divide, and peer-to-peer healthcare. For this post, I will focus on the sections of the report that concentrate on the use of social media. This report highlights two factors that are influencing the way patients and caregivers are using social media: (1) the increasing availability of online tools that facilitate sharing, and (2) the strong motivation for people living with chronic conditions, to develop non-traditional support networks (Fox, 2011a) .

Finding Health Information

Recent data from the Pew demonstrate that increasingly people are turning to the Internet to obtain health information (Fox, 2011a) . When surveyed in 2010, 80% of respondents that used the Internet reported looking online for health information (Fox, 2011a) . Additionally, 34 % of respondents went to an online news group, blog, or website to hear about someone else’s experience with a health or medical issue (Fox, 2011a) . In terms of online activities related to seeking health information, mobile users were more likely than non-mobile users to use social media to find, interact, and share health information (Fox, 2011a) . Because of these trends, there is an increasing expectation that users will have access to the information that they need, when they need it, and how they need it.

Sharing Health Information

As of September 2010 11% of all adults that use social networking sites (SNS) reported following health related updates (Fox, 2011b). Additionally, 15% of participants received health information from a SNS, and 14% raised money for a health related cause on a SNS (Fox, 2011b) . Patients are not the only group of healthcare consumers using social media for finding, exchanging, and collaborating with health information. Individuals caring for loved ones are much more likely to use social media for seeking and sharing health information and for support (Fox, 2011b) . In some cases, patients might not have direct access to the Internet. This might explain why caregivers are functioning as online surrogates for patients without Internet access. The Pew refers to this type of Internet access as “second degree” access. Given this, caregivers can serve as an access point to the Internet, and represent an opportunity for the engagement of users who do not have access to the Internet (Fox, 2011c) .

Melinda Blau and Karen L. Fingerman developed the term consequential strangers to describe the unique relationships that develop between patients and caregivers, many of who are connected online (Blau & Fingerman, 2009). For more information about the supportive role of SNS with caregivers, please check out the Consequential Strangers blog by Melinda Blau, or visit her Facebook page.

So, What Does This All Mean?

Susannah Fox highlighted a number of important trends from this report, when she spoke at the National Institutes of Health on August 2, 2011. When introducing Susannah, Kelli Marciel (NIH Office of Disease Prevention) stressed the importance of questioning, “what we think we know,” about the use of social media in health.  

The ways in which people find, collaborate, and share information about their health is changing. A driving factor in this change is the Internet. According to the Pew, three-quarters of U.S. adults use the Internet (Fox, 2011c) . This number is more dramatic when you look at 2000 – 2010 trend data from the Pew (figure 1).

Figure 1: Change in Internet Use 2000 – 2010.

According to Fox, the increased access to the Internet and the availability of social media tools are “inviting users to participate more fully in the online world” (Fox, 2011c) . As demonstrated by the findings from the Pew, this level of engagement is also extending to the domain of healthcare. In particular, these actions are driven by the confluence of two powerful forces: (1) the “ancient instinct to share and seek advice,” and (2) the “newfound ability to find, share, and collaborate at Internet speeds (Fox, 2011c) .” If you are interested in learning more about this talk, the NIH has archived the Mind the Gap talk that Susannah gave in August.

As Kristen Purcell (Pew Internet) notes, the way in which we communicate with our users is changing. We can no longer expect our users to interact with us using traditional communication channels. We need to use social networking tools to create opportunities to interact with them in “their space,” and become nodes in “their networks.”

I would love to start an online conversation about the ways in which social media and mobile are transforming the way in which users find, share, and collaborate with health information. To start the dialogue, please leave a comment below, or reach out to me via email.

References and Resources

Blau, M., & Fingerman, K. L. (2009). Consequential strangers : the power of people who don't seem to matter-- but really do (1st ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Fox, S. (2011a). Health Topics: 80% of internet users look for health information online. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

Fox, S. (2011b). The Social Life of Health Information, 2011 The Social Life of Health Information. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

Fox, S. (2011c). Mind the Gap: Peer-to-peer Healthcare, 2011 The Social Life of Health Information. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

Torgan, C. (2011). Self-tracking, Sensors, and mHealth: Trends and Opportunities. Paper presented at the 2011 mHealth Networking Conference, Chicago, IL.

Flickr Image – Creative Commons- http://www.flickr.com/photos/7156988@N04/5317886665/in/pool-creative_commons-_free_pictures

Doug Joubert is a Technical Librarian with the National Institutes of Health, The NIH Library. His full office acronym  is OD/OM/ORS/DLS/IAB

Making Public Health More Social

SAMHSA recently launched its Social Health Hub to help support public health organizations interested in using social media in support of their agency’s mission.  The Hub seeks to provide a central location for public health practitioners to learn from the work of their peers. It will include practical guidance, case studies and information on how social media can have a positive, demonstrable impact.

How this Supports SAMHSA’s Mission

Social media, like any other organizational effort, should not be conducted in a vacuum but should be clearly connected to the larger vision for achieving an organization’s mission. SAMHSA’s Public Awareness and Support Strategic Initiative recognizes the value of social media as an effective tool for public engagement and SAMHSA’s social media team is committed to collaborating with our federal, state and local colleagues.  By partnering with public health agencies at all levels of government, SAMHSA can help build a robust, nationwide network of social media practitioners. This network will serve as a valuable resource for the entire public health community and help SAMHSA reach larger and more diverse audiences with the message that behavioral health, defined as a state of mental/emotional being and/or choices and actions that affect wellness, is an essential component to overall health.

How You Can Help

Peer learning and peer sharing are designed to be at the core of this effort. SAMHSA’s Social Media Hub is meant to be just that, a hub to bring together the ideas and the activities of the public health community. This initiative is just getting started but it is only through your support and participation that this project will be successful.

Some of the ways that you can participate now include:

1. Finding your local health department in our Public Health Social Media Directory and verifying  that we have captured all of the official social media accounts. If not, let us know what we are missing and we will update the listing.
2. Sharing a case study of how your agency has used social media to help your colleagues across the country make the best use of these valuable tools.
3. Liking us on Facebook, Following us on Twitter, Watching our videos on YouTube and including behavioral health information as part of the messages you share on your own social media platforms.

Finally, please share this project and this post with any colleagues interested in or actively using social media as part of their public health activities. Together, we can make public health more social.

Andrew Wilson  is the New Media Strategist for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. His full office location acronym is HHS/SAMHSA/OA.

Innovation and Inclusion – Accessibility and New Media at HHS

by Henry Claypool
The public’s growing expectation that their government will use new online technologies to communicate with them coincides with today’s tighter budgets. More than ever, the public expects that we do more with less.

When we use new media tools, it's more important than ever that the information we provide for all Americans to access can indeed be accessed by all Americans – both inside and outside the federal government.

The Accessibility of HHS new media matters! Now, more than ever, as a result of Executive Order 13548, HHS and our partners across the federal government are working to recruit and retain employees with disabilities. Furthermore as “the United States government’s principal agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services,” our agency is a clearinghouse of information vital to the well being and quality of life of Americans with disabilities.

Although the information is the same regardless of the media, users with disabilities draw upon different assistive technologies to access the information they require. For instance,  people who are blind navigate web pages using a screen reader, such as JAWS, which does exactly what you think it would. As blind users navigate a web page with their keyboard, the screen reader tells them what is on the screen. They hit “Tab” to jump around to different parts of the webpage. What a webpage reads like to someone who is blind is often very different than how a webpage reads to a sighted user.

Technical steps have to be taken in the design process of building websites and applications to ensure that blind users can access and easily navigate them. For government webpages this is not only the ethical thing to do, it - as you probably know- is the law. Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act of 1973 requires:

1. when Federal agencies develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology, Federal employees with disabilities have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to the access and use by Federal employees who are not individuals with disabilities
2. individuals with disabilities, who are members of the public seeking information or services from a Federal agency, have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to that provided to the public who are not individuals with disabilities unless an undue burden would be imposed on the agency.

Adherence to this is what we call Section 508 compliance. Compliance is far easier and more cost-efficient when it is designed from the get-go.

While the Federal government is bound by Section 508, it is less well known that private companies building online tools and applications must meet a more general standard, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, when they receive federal funding to provide programs and services to the public.   Many private companies building new media tools in the private sector simply aren't aware of accessibility needs and requirements. This needs to change. We encourage developers and companies to incorporate accessibility standards into the design and development process from the beginning and to keep in mind the broad universe of potential customers.

One way to shift the conversation is to start at home. In the emails that we send to each other, in the documents we share and in the free online tools we incorporate into our websites, we should ensure that our actions hold true to Department’s mission and that the information we generate is available for everyone  including our co-workers. In doing so, we create a government that is more open and collaborative, not only with the American people, but also for the federal workforce. In order to increase accessibility awareness among the new media community, we need to lead the accessibility conversation by example.

For more information about Section 508 and the web see the following links:

• HHS.gov Section 508
• Addressing Accessibility in Social Media
• Accessibility Testing Results of Web2.0 Tools

Henry Claypool is the Director of the HHS Office on Disability. His full office location acronym is HHS/OS/OD. Learn more About us.

HHS Challenges Toolkit Released, Webinar Next Week

By Read Holman

From video contests to apps contests, HHS has been using challenges and competitions to take advantage of the imagination and innovation of the American people. And earlier this year, Congress passed and the President signed the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act, a game-changer for the Federal Government’s use of challenges. The HHS Innovations Council has recently released an HHS Challenges Toolkit found on the HHS Open Gov’t site.

Challenges are on the same procurement-mechanism tool belt as grants and contracts. And to promote the possibility of challenges as an everyday option for the Department, next Wednesday the 27^th at 2pm ET, the HHS Center for New Media will be hosting a webinar where Challenge experts will present and then answer questions on challenges generally and the HHS Challenge Toolkit specifically. Here are the deets:

Challenges and Competitions: How HHS is using this new tool to foster innovation

Wednesday, July 27 at 2pm ET
Register now by clicking here (Sorry - Gov’t Employees only)

Panel members:

• Wilma Tilson (ASPE) - Panel moderator & HHS Challenge Ambassador
• Brandon Kessler (ChallengePost) & Karen Trebon (GSA) - to provide an overview of challenge.gov
• Wil Yu (ONC) - to discuss ONC's i2 project
• Abdul Shaikh (NIH/NCI) - discussing implementing a challenge through a case study
• Elizabeth Kittrie (ASPE) - discussing the HHS Challenges Toolkit and resources for challenge managers
• Diane Canzano (OGC) - fielding questions related to the legal interpretations in the guidance on Challenges and Competitions

HHS CTO Todd Park announced the release of the HHS Challenges Toolkit in his recent Open Government Blog post. Here’s an excerpt of that July 18 post:

As I look across HHS, I see remarkable change underway in how we undertake problem-solving in service of our organization’s mission objectives. Information technology, open access to data, and use of social networks are clearly opening broad new horizons of innovation and discovery. Our emphasis on the Open Government principles of transparency, collaboration, and participation are embodied in this approach to our work. Crowdsourcing practices coupled with the use of challenges and competitions that award prizes for problem-solving are powerful innovation levers.

Today, we are unveiling our HHS Challenge Toolkit website that provides HHSers with experience, guidance documents, best practices, templates and other tools, along with a “winner’s circle” that celebrates successful challenge and solutions providers. It’s our hope that these tools will help HHS innovators tap into the “power of many” across the country to advance health and well-being. Check out these tools and let us know what you think!

Here are the key two links for more information, and certainly feel free to comment below:

• Register for the Webinar (Sorry - Gov’t Employees Only) >>
• Check out the HHS Challenge Toolkit >>

Read Holman is a New Media Strategist. His full office location acronym is HHS/OS/ASPA/WCD Learn more About Us.

Podcasting 1.0.1 Revealed

By Nick Garlow

Podcasting can be an effective new media tool used in conjunction with other outreach efforts. There are more than 40 public facing HHS podcasts, all with different niches. For example, the HHS HealthBeat is a podcast that educates the public on health prevention tips, 5 days a week. NIH Clinical Radio is a bi-weekly podcast whose audience is interested in news on medical research being done at the American’s Clinical Research Hospital.

There are many forms of podcasts, many ways to produce them, and any of them can be equally effective. They can be used to answer health and safety questions, like Ask CDC does using a short and formal format, or target a specific demographic, like Women’s Health by CDC, that uses an extended, less formal, interview format. Podcasts are one new media tool that can be used in different ways to brand your mission. They’re also a tool that can be used to reach different audiences, and specifically to broadcast health information.  A recent study by Edison Research and Arbitron  found that those who listen to podcasts are all different ages, 12 and up.  

Getting Started

The HHS Center for New Media is releasing guidance on podcasting, as it has in the past with new media tools like YouTube and Facebook. When putting guidance together on new media tools like the ones mentioned we make sure to involve new media experts from across HHS. To ensure that we provide you with the best guidance we can, it’s important to bring others into the process for collaboration and feedback. I’ve worked with experienced podcast leaders from HHS, NIH and CDC among others to put together the HHS Podcast Guidance Document; a resource for someone who has never done a podcast before.

Here are some key points that should be taken in consideration during the planning process for a podcast.  

• Identify: What is your mission? Who is your audience? What is your timeline? How does podcasting fit into your communication strategy?
• Standards & Policies: The presentation of your podcasts must be 508 compliant, and you must be aware of records keeping policies when archiving your podcast.
• Understand the Medium: If you’ve never podcasted before, become familiar with terms like voice over, sound on tape, RSS feed, and music bed.
• Resources: Do you have the time, budget, and necessary equipment to complete a podcast? Understand your capabilities from the beginning.
• The Step-by-Step Process: How do you go from an original idea to a published podcast? This requires scheduling interviews, editing audio, script consultation, voice tracking, and more.

All of these steps and more are outlined in the Podcast Guidance Document<link>, to help you get started and become a successful podcaster. Consider that nearly 70 million Americans, of all ages, have at one time listened to a podcast before. Good luck, and let the podcasting begin!

Nick Garlow is a Public Affairs Specialist in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. His full office location acronym is HHS/OS/ASPA/WCD. Learn more About Us.

Taming the Information Overload Beast

By Jennifer Olsen

As you might expect, immediately following a disaster, there is an overwhelming amount of information and misinformation buzzing around about the event, its aftermath, the immediate impacts, and long-term effects. This information pours out from big new organizations, government agencies, non-government organizations, community leaders, and individuals alike. In assessing the situation and deciding how to respond to it, it is not just responders, but also the public, who need to wade through this information overload and figure which sources are useful and which aren’t. To protect health and save lives, we have to integrate and analyze these multiple data sources incredibly fast.

Social Media to the rescue?

Adding to the fray now is social media. During recent disasters, we've seen and read stories about people being rescued by Tweeting and so on, but the usefulness of social media in public health emergencies goes beyond the anecdotes. Epidemiology research actually shows that social media and news media sources can indicate disease outbreaks even before traditional formal surveillance systems. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) uses informal information sources to aid in many of their outbreak investigations. It’s common knowledge that people use Google and other internet search tools to research symptoms when a family member or friend is sick. Taking it a step further, an uptick in these searches may indicate the emergence of a disease, giving us early indicators of new and emerging disease outbreaks.

Taming the information flow

The HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response wants to standardize how all that information is converted into actionable knowledge and create a collaborative culture that helps public health and medical decision-makers and responders across the nation. To make this happen, we are looking for private industry, government agencies, academic institutions, non-profit organizations, and just regular every day people to participate in a series of discussion forums.

The forums will help us identify innovative ways to utilize new types of information during a public health response – so everyone is better informed, better prepared, and better able to respond fast to protect health and maybe even save a life. Ultimately, the question we’re asking is this: how do we efficiently and effectively manage large volumes of internal and external disparate data sources necessary for situational awareness and rapid decision support, as well as discover new indicators and warnings of events of public health significance?

We’re calling this discussion series the “Fusion Forums.” Meeting information can be found at www.phe.gov/fusionforum or contact fusion.info@hhs.gov.

Jennifer Olsen is the Fusion Cell Branch Chief. Her full office location acronym is HHS/ASPR/OPEO. Learn more About Us.

10 Tips on Social Communications during a Conference

By Read Holman

Today you don’t have to be physically present at a conference to get value out of it. Therefore, every event planning committee should be asking: How do we share the value of the conference with the rest of the world and in real time?

While video streaming the event allows for the speeches and formal presentations to be broadcast online, conferences have another powerful (often more powerful) element: The conversations between attendees at the conference.

So we have a second question: How do we expand the conversation sphere so that people not in attendance can listen and contribute?

Here are some lessons learned from the 2nd Annual Health Data Initiative Conference at the Natcher Auditorium of the National Institutes of Health held just a couple weeks ago.

1. Include the #hashtag with all promo materials.
   
   The #hashtag defines the virtual conference room that your online participants will enter. It needs to be easy to remember, not too long, and included in press releases, blog posts, the live-streaming page, the agenda, your forehead.... everywhere. Does each breakout session warrant its own hashtag? If, so put those on the agenda.
   
2. Have ‘announcement updates’ pre-populated.
   
   Turns out that most of the official tweets can be written out before the conference even begins. While you’ll need to be flexible in case things change, having updates prepared can ensure that you’re timely. Build this out in a wiki for easy maintenance.
   
3. See yourself as a hub.
   
   Ten universities from across the country held their own ‘viewing parties’ where they gathered people to watch and discuss the event themselves. Recognize that these off-shoots have different perspectives, often more local and practical than presented at the conference. Ask leaders of these viewing parties to be active participants in the online conversation.
   
4. Have a communications “War Room”.
   
   A handful of people sitting in the same room monitoring online outlets, and discussing the play-by-play of the conference can go a long way to getting a streamlined operation. This is not a new concept, per se. But recognizing the prominent role of the web during the conference, and building around that, is an essential piece that helps the rest of this list truly work. Elements of this might include: conference stream on a wall; white board with relevant hashtags; the agenda made available. From here you can easily solicit and filter questions from the online audience.
   
5. Define a core communications team.
   
   There should be a small team whose role it is to share the event’s activities with those who can’t be there. They run the twitter accounts. They monitor the networks for questions, concerns. They mostly live in the War Room, perhaps bouncing between breakout sessions. Depending on your conference, this team may include non-feds
   
6. Give multiple people access to the official account(s).
   
   One person may tire during the day, and how are they supposed to be at all the breakout sessions at the same time? Giving multiple people access helps diffuse the burden. Just be sure you know which account you’re tweeting from.
   
7. Add value to the conversation.
   
   Simply posting what is happening is important. But by including links to background information or a website referenced, your updates can augment a presentation or a speech. (This gets back to customer service.)
   
8. Know your megaphones.
   
   Some people have accounts with 44 followers, others with 44,000 followers. Recognize who the key influencers are and connect with them before the event. Ensure they know what the #hashtag and official accounts are.
   
9. Personal vs Gov’t accounts.
   
   This one gets tricky. For the most part, we kept @HealthDataGov as a push tool, for the now-this-is-happening kind of tweets; the kind that can mostly be pre-populated. However, when people online ask questions or make comments that need to be addressed, for example noting that the volume is low on the live stream, we reached out to them on our personal accounts to either get more information on the problem or let them know that we were working on it.
   
10. For the participants, have all the assets in one place online.
    
    Our hhs.gov/live page included the live video stream, a twitter fall of our @HealthDataGov account, a link to our Ustream feed, a way for them to email in comments (in case they don’t have or don’t want to use a social network), and an HTML-coded agenda full of hyperlinks. This is a true opportunity to provide excellent customer service to those looking for information. As much as possible, anticipate the information that someone may need and provide it there. Don’t make them search for it.

In the planning of any conference or event, decisions of priority and feasibility have to be made. Events that are not live streamed have an even stronger call for a social presence. In the end it comes down to providing great customer service with the time and tools at your disposal.

Did you attend the event? What did you notice? Watch it remotely? What worked and what didn’t? Missed the whole all-together? Check out what one of the participants put together.  

(Why are we linking to others' content? Bonus lesson: Ensure that the afterlife of your event is as much in the planning as the event itself!)

Workplace of the Future: Mobile Collaboration

By Tori Garten

The impact of Mobile technology can be seen popping up in a variety of places, first as one off successes, adding up to a tidal wave of change on how we do business, and how we expect to do business.  As mobile technologies impact real world problems we should start to consider how we can take advantage of these tools in our everyday work lives.

As mobile technologies improve, so does the opportunity for greater teleworking opportunities. Recently supervisors were required to identify all employees’ telework status; the The Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 actively encourages teleworking to provide “greater flexibility in managing our workforce.”

Moving from Portable to Collaborative

The emphasis in the past for teleworkers has been on identifying work that is portable, and to some extent individual or independent work. Looking backwards, this emphasis made sense. We had to trust employees to work when out of sight – managing by work product rather than by clock. The emphasis has been on work best done without interruption and to not negatively impact the work of others in the office.  The work had to be individual and independent work and portable as well.  The reality being that in the past it has been challenging to access internal systems that one might use during a “regular” day in the office.

It is fascinating that the push for telework comes in conjunction with a movement towards more collaborative work.  No longer is the independent/individual /portal work the only work that needs to be accomplished while teleworking. Perhaps “mobile working” is a better word for what is starting to occur in the workforce. Telework implies a sense of separateness and detachment – that portable and independent aspect. But todays work requires collaboration. Works is done by teams solving complex problems – “They require a variety of skillsets, perspectives and approaches” (Harvard Business Review).

It is no coincidence that mobile working and the expectation for mobile working are increasing as the millennial or gen y’ers enter the workforce.  It is the perfect storm impacting the workplace today.  There is no doubt that the workplace of tomorrow will be significantly different.

So what do we need to do to ride the wave of this perfect storm without drowning?  We need to recognize these forces bearing down on us, and help our agencies and our coworkers to take advantage of these new tools, to seek out new tools to support a virtual office environment, to not accept the status quo. We need to identify the issues and barriers to success and one by one knock them down. 

A few ideas:

• Conference calls too hard to hear? Perhaps microphones hanging from the ceiling instead of the Polycom phone on the table that picks up every tapping finger and flipping of notes.
• Setting up a conference call burdensome and process heavy? What about checking out using Skype?
• Mobile worker can’t see the slides? Make it standard that a web meeting is used so screens can be shared.
• Develop an office norm that all documents, meeting notes, presentations, and other collateral resides on a collaboration environment where it can be accessed remotely and keeps email from becoming a filing cabinet.
• Provide for online chat functionality that substitutes for those office drop-ins and hallway conversations.
• Allow 5 minutes at the start of the conference call for chit chat and office banter.
• Take a look at mentoring programs – consider two mentors - older mentor for business wisdom and a younger mentor for how to use today’s technology in an everyday way.
• Take advantage of the knowledge of those younger workers and ask them to develop a mobile working toolkit for less tech savvy employees.

Our mission to improve the health of American citizens is not a 9-5 job, and health improvements don’t just take place in an office environment. We should be able to work efficiently, effectively and completely from anywhere, at any time.

Of course face time is important and we shouldn’t expect to work completely remotely. Virtual teams in the commercial world find value in getting teams together a few times a year.  We need to keep that element, but we may need to supplement it with workplace social networking tools.  Look for a future blog post on the topic of workplace social networking tools and maintaining office culture for mobile teams.

What are some ways you have found to improve the quality of mobile working? What tools are you using to support and improve mobile working and collaboration?

Video for the Web: Getting Bang for the Buck

by Michael Wilker

Grabbing and keeping attention is not always easy when your subject matter or spokesperson isn’t the most dynamic. Shows like “Shark Men” or “Monster Bugs” are easier to sell on National Geographic and Discovery (full disclosure: I used to work for these companies), than “Understanding Medical Loss Ratio: The Numbers Behind the Policy” (I made that one up). 

But no matter what the topic, the approach is still pretty much the same: Tell a story. In fact the best way to get bang for your buck in video production is to tell a story that is easy to follow and draws the viewer into the character.

I have a list of questions that I’ve used for videos for more than a decade; a lot of those videos were for major broadcasters and a lot for government clients. The top 3 questions are:

• What’s the main point(s) you want to make in the program? (keep it to 3 or less)
• Who is the target audience?
• What do you want them to do after they watch the program? (call to action)

 Knowing the answers to these three questions builds a foundation on how to best spend your money and get the product you want.

OK. These are pretty simple points to figure out, so why isn’t every government video a hit? The easy answer is time and money. The complicated answer is time and money.

One of the great storytellers in the new media age is Hans Rosling. Hans takes centuries-worth of complex trends and explains their meaning in story form. One example is from a TED Talk about energy consumption. Hans draws the viewer in because he has a story to tell about his grandmother in Sweden that relates to the subject. He could’ve spouted off statistics and theories and the dire consequences of global warming, but he got his points across more memorably through the story of his grandmother. The lessons learned from listening to stories last much longer than spewing statistics and facts.

We’re working on a video on patient safety right now. Last month HHS held a press conference at the National Press Club with the Secretary and top HHS officials; they had all the facts and figures down cold. They presented professionally and answered questions concisely. The person who got the most attention, though, was the mother who lost her 18-month-old child due to medical errors. She had a story to tell.

We were able to pull that story out and develop a video that, we believe, is memorable and moving. Because it is memorable and moving it will have a greater impact on improving patient safety. When video is done right, it can have an impact on behaviors that influence public health. A video that drives home the call to action is a video of value.

Put time into drawing analogies, looking for real-world examples, finding stories. On the web you have only the very beginning of the video to make an impression that will keep eyeballs on the screen for the entire presentation. Don’t bury the lead. Present a powerful story at the top to keep your audience engaged and caring about what you have to say. That’s where the money is best spent. 

Flickr photo by kcolwell (CC)

Strategic Planning that LinkedIn

by Moniqua Roberts

Organizations should have an established strategic communications plan that includes their mission, goals, objectives and target audience before leaping into the new media fray. 

The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP) recently decided to use LinkedIn for their Healthy People 2020 (HP2020) campaign. HP2020 provides science-based, 10-year national objectives to help Americans “attain high-quality, longer lives, free of preventable diseases, disability, injury, and premature death.” HP2020 is the product of an extensive feedback process that integrates input from public health professionals, the public, and various government level departments.

ODPHP wanted this engaged community to become the ambassadors of Healthy People 2020 after it was launched. It was a priority to connect with those aware of and involved in HP2020 while expanding into the non-health sector professional arena (such as those working in education, housing and non-profit).

But where would the continued engagement take place? ODPHP recognized that it wasn't a question of “which platform?“ but more of a strategic question of "What does our community want and where do they go to gather information?" 

ODPHP’s research found that most people use Facebook for personal interests and interactions with family and friends. But ODPHP wanted a platform that tailored to individuals’ professional lives and fostered a professional online community - thus, they chose LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has more than 100 million members and allows anyone to create a Group for free. LinkedIn offers certain group customizations, integration with twitter, automatic confirmation emails to help with group membership, comments and discussions moderation (before going live), and members can “like” content and "follow" one another to carry conversations beyond the group setting. (However, LinkedIn does not offer any metrics evaluation for their free groups).

ODPHP tweeted and emailed out information on their LinkedIn group to encourage people to get involved early. Today HP2020 LinkedIn Group now has over 1,000 members and a number of ongoing conversations. Last October, ODPHP celebrated Health Literacy Month with a live twitter chat. (Read the related Health Out Loud blog post.)  The event was a success and the participants wanted to continue the discussion. On the HP2020 LinkedIn Group, health literacy discussions among group members have cropped up organically, looping in new audiences while also providing a new platform for the discussion in a format that allows for more in-depth interaction.  This offers an interesting example of how to cross-promote within and between different social media platforms, and how they can complement rather than compete with each other. As a result of the continued interest in health literacy, there are now monthly #healthlit chats sponsored by Health Literacy Missouri that cover an array of subjects, with one recent chat covering the Affordable Care Act.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. By clearly defining their target audience first, ODPHP carefully crafted a solid strategic communications plan that takes significant advantage of a third party platform.

If you’re interested in learning more about ODPHP’s use of LinkedIn, go the HP202 LinkedIn Group or contact Jessica.Mark@hhs.gov.

How Do We Measure the Effect of New Media?

by Doug Joubert

Last year you finally convinced your boss of the importance of exploring new media as a way of reaching your constituents. You launched an agency FaceBook page, you have 500 followers on Twitter, and your blog was recently highlighted in the Federal Times. However, now your boss wants you to assess the return on investment for your social media. How do you even know where to begin?

Where Do I Even Start?

First, you need to revisit your communications plan. The overall objectives of the social media component should drive what you measure. I highly recommend Andrew Wilson blog post “Making Social Media Boring (or at least trying to)” for more information about the symbiotic relationship between your overall communication plan and your social media strategy.

In terms of assessing user behaviors, social media has created a number of challenges. First, given the unique characteristics of social media, one of the first challenges is knowing what to measure. Second, you might start to wonder if traditional instruments like a return on investment (ROI) provide an accurate picture of user engagement. Engagement, maybe this is a more appropriate measure of what drives your social media programs. For more information about the importance of engagement, check out Kathryn Hambleton’s post “HHS @ SXSWi Part 3: Strategies for Engaging Online Communities.”

Beth Kanter, the author of Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media has an extremely useful perspective on measuring the value of social media, which she calls the other Four I's of ROI : (1) Return on Insight, (2) Return on Interaction, (3) Return on Investment, and (4) Return on Impact.

In terms of measuring the success of a social media program, I feel that one of more salient “I’s” is a Return on Interaction. Specifically, how are you interacting and engaging with your users? Wait a minute, there is that engagement word again...perhaps we are on to something.

One aspect of engagement is developing meaningful online relationships with your users. This is a time consuming process that might frustrate managers used to more traditional assessment measures, for example, surveys. The way in which users interact with social media has some unique characteristics. Hoffman and Fodor have developed what they call the four Cs that drive the use of social media. Social media has created an environment where users are totally in Control of their online experience. Blogs, Wikis, and social sites like Facebook have created an environment where users are encouraged to Connect to other users in their networks, and to Create and Consume online content (Hoffman and Fodor, 2010).

What Measures Do I Use?

I have just outlined a number of unique characteristics of evaluating social media, and provided resources for looking at this issue from the 30,000-foot level. However, now I need to know what metrics are best for evaluating specific social media tools. The table below is a collection of common metrics useful for evaluating social media. For a more complete list, please consult the article by Hoffman and Fodor .

Table Data sources: (1) Hoffman & Marek, (2) Facebook Insights: Product Guide for Facebook Page Owners , and (3) Mashable.com Social Media Page .

Do you still feel like you have more questions than answers? Send us an email or better yet, comment on this post to continue this conversation. Remember, you are not alone; there are a lot of smart people grappling with this issue.

References

1. Hoffman, Donna and Fodor, Marek. "Can You Measure the ROI of Your Social Media Marketing?"MIT Sloan Management Review. Fall 2010.
2. Kanter, Beth "Principles of Social Media ROI." Presented at the 3rd Annual Women Who Tech TeleSummit. September 15, 2010. Available at http://www.bethkanter.org/wwt-ro/ .
3. Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project Surveys.(2008-2010)
4. Raine, Lee. "How Libraries Can Survive in the New Media Ecosystem." Presented at the Catalonian Library Association's biennial meeting. May 19, 2010.

Making Social Media Boring (or at least trying to)

by Andrew Wilson

Social media has had a pretty impressive run over the past few years. Some of the credit is well deserved and some of the hype is probably, well, hyperbolic. If we want government to realize the full value of social media, we need to make it boring. We need to make it a part of our standard business processes and something deemed nothing more than (and nothing less than) every other element considered essential to a successful project. 

As a way to kickoff this conversation, I would like to suggest three ways to make social media just another thing that government does (and does well):

Starting with a Safety Net

Social media is clearly not only for the young ; however it is still something new to many organizations, and individuals working in government may have little direct experience with it. We can hardly fault those hesitant to dive head first into social networks when the main messages they may still hear are of risks and threats and where the boundaries between public and private are sometimes fuzzy. Moreover, social media is often difficult to grasp until you actually do take those first few steps and get your feet wet. This being the case, greater effort should be put into using social media INTERNALLY. This has the dual benefit of providing a safe space for people to experience these tools while also providing some very tangible benefits to the organization in terms of collaboration and knowledge management.

Building a Bigger Tent

Currently, the vast majority of government activities in social media are focused on communication or public affairs projects. However, one of the real strengths of social media is that just about EVERYONE can use these tools to do their job more effectively. There are, of course, caveats to every situation but some possible examples include: Human Resources using Twitter to answer recruiting questions; Researchers using wikis to collaborate and share information; Crisis Managers using monitoring tools to get an accurate, real-time, picture of unfolding events. Democratizing the availability and use of social media is a key step in getting greater buy-in for these tools and in making their use more the rule than the exception.

Making Ourselves Accountable

One of the signs of technological maturity is that people begin to take a much more critical look at the demonstrable effectiveness of a tool, process or project. Social media is beginning to move increasingly to the point where people want to know how social media is impacting mission. What is the Return on Investment (ROI) or, in terms more aligned with the gestalt of social media, what is the Return on Engagement (ROE)? Those of us using these tools should not fear this scrutiny but rather embrace it as an opportunity to deepen our understanding and make a stronger case for why government should be devoting resources to social media. We need to get to the point where no one is asking IF social media is effective but have rather come to EXPECT evidence of its impact with every project where it is used.

And, YES, This is Relevant for What We do

A recent Pew Internet report  established the concept of “peer-to-peer healthcare” where the sharing aspects of social media increasingly merge with people’s natural tendency to turn to friends and family for support and advice around health care issues. However, it is not only patients that are going online to look for healthcare information, public health practitioners and organizations of all types are using these tools as well to engage, learn and share. For example, there are more than 3,000 hospital social networking sites in the U.S.  and,  every Sunday, there is lively discussion among health care professionals in a weekly #HCSM chat  (Healthcare Communications & Social Media. And see this directory of healthcare twitter chats )

For us to remain relevant, if we want our information to be there at the point in which a person is making a behavioral decision, we need to participate in social media. And to be successful and to get everyone involved, we will also need to make it boring.

Does this makes sense? If not, drop in a comment and let me know. If so, get to work.

HHS @ SXSWi Part 3: Strategies for Engaging Online Communities

By Kathryn Hambleton

Part of using new media to effectively build communities online is understanding how to engage your audience.  Engagement can help us to understand our stakeholders, spread the reach of our messages, and even lead to behavior change through peer influence. While some communities need no help engaging their community members, others see engagement as a growing challenge with the increasing number of online communities competing for attention from our audiences.

Effective use of technology to engage was one theme running through SXSWi . I attended a number sessions on engagement and have included a few key points from some of those sessions below: 

One panel titled “How Many Rungs?: Social Change & the Engagement Ladder ” discussed how traditional models of community engagement, which tend to include some sort of pyramid or ladder where people successively move up higher levels of engagement, may not necessarily apply in online engagement. Rather, these models may represent more of an audience distribution that ranges from silent observers to highly active participants.  People may jump in at any point in the distribution, and varying the level of effort required for engagement opportunities will allow visitors within various levels of the distribution to get involved.

View the slides or read the tweets .

The panelists on “Lurkers: Your Most Important Community Members ” discussed strategies for engaging the silent observers in a community. The passive observes are the largest segment in your audience, but can often be the most difficult to understand because of their lack of engagement.  Practice random acts of connection by reaching out to members of the community directly and ask how you can help, what you can do to better serve their needs, and how you can add value to their experience. Depending on the size of your community, you can contact individual members, encourage them to contact you directly, or allow your more passive participants to provide feedback through a poll or survey.  Also, offering simple tasks that require less effort than others will make it easy for observers to become more actively engaged.

Read the tweets .

In “Health Communities: Superheroes Who Need a Justice League ,” Jennifer Prokopy talked about some of the ways that online health communities are different from other communities. Government may be a credible resource, but many people are looking for a shared experience where they are able to relate to others in similar situations. Partnering with those communities leaders to empower them to share our credible resources may be more effective than creating our own communities and expecting people to engage just because we are credible.

Read the tweets .

Understanding how to identify influencers and leverage champions in a community to increase engagement continues to evolve.  It is just important to reach the people who count as it is to count the people you reach. Credibility and context outrank reach and numbers and it is important to know where influencer’s realm of influence lies. 

Browse the sessions below to learn more about the growing discussion on influence and new media:

• The Science of Influence
• Influencers Will Inherit the Earth. Quick, Market Them!
• People Power: Leveraging Personal Stories to Build Influence
• Building Better Influence
• Influencer Throwdown: Proving Influence Once and For All
• Everyone’s Wrong about Influence. Except your Customers
• Online Mom Communities = Hotbed of Local Influencers

What do you do to keep your community engaged? Do you have any tips to share to help others better engage their communities? 

HHS @ SXSWi Part 2: Web Team or Ambassadors for Change?

by Tori Garten

After last year’s Federal Web Managers Conference, I started to think about the role the web team can play in organization management and changing the culture of government from within.

Attending this year’s SXSWi conference reinforced this idea for me.  As web managers and web teams our role is commonly defined as that of disseminating content and information through the web. However, the Open Government Initiative pushes this role to another level. The explosion of social media, mobile devices and the rapid development of apps blows apart the one way push of information dissemination. Not only is the rapidly evolving digital world changing how we communicate, but it is changing - or SHOULD be changing - how we do work.

Themes from SXSWi were on solving problems using game theory and game mechanics, using social networks and developing communities, of revealing data and setting the data free, and essentially making the world a better place.

The themes that have been truly resonating with me go hand-in-hand with the HHS mission. At its core, our mission is to improve citizens’ lives through improved health. We do this through communicating, collaborating, supporting research, and seeking to change behaviors to improve health.

We should be asking ourselves how can we do this better? How can we do this effectively, efficiently, smartly? New media can play a role beyond disseminating content by helping our organizations see ways to work smarter. To explore and innovate new solutions. To ask the "what ifs".

The culture is shifting and our organizations need to shift too. We have the knowledge, skills, mind sets and enthusiasm to effect change within our organizations, how our organizations do work. We can help change or hack, as a geek might say, work processes that are out of date. We can help re-train and re-educate our fellow employees on the tools available that can help them do their jobs and reduce wasted effort. We can help our coworkers see another way of solving a problem or completing a task. We can help grow the understanding of how sharing government data can result in improving people’s lives - with no additional cost to the government.

I was inspired by Todd Park’s, HHS CTO, presentation . Not only is the work itself having exciting results, but the way in which Todd and his team are approaching this work should be a model for others. Supporting transparency, sharing data and inspiring innovation are key to us succeeding in our missions. Starting with "what might be possible, rather than with what cannot be done ".

It’s just as important to get out the story of this innovation attitude and start-up mentality. It is said that Millennials are the most engaged and have the most pro-government view of recent generations. They believe in affecting change through technology. Through sharing data and simplifying processes, we help citizens be more involved in helping solve problems. Government can be a "data sugar daddy" and citizen geeks can build the layers, tools, revelations of data in ways not previously imagined.

Change is hard. Especially for large organizations known for stability.  Are we up for the challenge of being ambassadors of change? Are we ready to turn in our web master hats for a bigger hat? Can we help balance risk management and policy compliance with new tools and new ways of working? If we don't do it, who will?

HHS @ SXSWi Part 1: Sound bites

By Read Holman

I’m writing from Austin, Texas, the capital of the Lone Star State, checking in from South by Southwest Interactive, or SXSWi. For those of you who don’t know, SXSWi is one of the biggest technology conferences in the world. I’ve met people from California to Nova Scotia, from South Korea to Hamburg, Germany. Over 10,000 people are here, including a number of people from HHS here to observe trends in technology, meet innovators outside of our normal circle, and to hear presentations from some of the smartest people in the industry.

With over 1,000 panels, sessions and events with a wide range of topics, it’s difficult to keep track of even a fraction of the activities. Sessions vary from Your Computer is the Next Wonderdrug and Offline America, Why We Have A Digital Divide to Stop the Bleeding! Immersive Simulations for Surgeons , Inclusive Mobility: How to Make Mobile Apps Accessible , and The Behavior Change Checklist. Down with Gamefication , and well... a lot more.

A number of panels representing HHS were well attended. Including: Health Data Everywhere: Not a Drop to Link? , Minority Report: Social Media for Decreasing Health Disparities , and How Open Health Data Can Improve America's Health .

I’m still internalizing the information, presentations, and personal conversations I’ve had, so deeper reflection is still to come. But here are a few specific takeaways and sound-bites I’ve been chewing on thus far:

If you’re thinking mobile apps, your first one should be a web app. Platform-specific apps are secondary. Web apps and mobile-friendly versions of your websites are viewable across the various platforms. Plus the building of a platform-specific application requires learning (and retaining) expertise in the particular platform.

Contests and challenges continue to change the way government does business and interacts with the public. Thinking beyond the typical video contest is important. And partnerships with private vendors or other federal Agencies is a must to reach the visibility for a successful engagement challenge. See Apps for Healthy Kids: Government Challenges FTW .

Data Visualization with Lego’s is cool but doesn’t scale well to online presentation. Meanwhile the role and priorities of government related to data visualization continues to come up in conversation. Is it the role of government to simply release the data and let the private market communicate the values in that data?

Designers and developers/engineers often have competing interests but the end-user should remain the common goal. While the engineers at Google were excited to use the landscape-to-portrait rotation functionalities of the iPad, Gmail designers opted against using it as they thought it would disrupt the user experience.

People living with at least one chronic condition are actually less likely to search online for health information, according to Pew Internet research .

Simplicity trumps all. Simplicity in technological design, user interface, and communication messaging that lead to “baby steps” and tiny iterations of (user-generated) data are the most effective and sustainable public health campaigns. See Mobile Health in Africa: What can we learn?

Tablets are replacing the low-end computer in the electronics market.

Behavior change is not a targeted enough end goal for a public health campaign. What type of behavior change? According to BJ Fogg of Stanford University, there are 15 ways behavior can change . (So this is not particular to technology, but still applies to every messaging that uses technology!)

For a recap of health related activities and to follow them over the next two days, you can search twitter for #sxswh (the ‘h’ is for health).

Have you been following the SXSWi activities? What have you found as applying particularly to carrying out the mission of HHS? What insights are changing the face of healthcare and health communications?

Read Holman is a New Media Strategist. His full office location acronym is HHS/OS/ASPA/WCD Learn more About Us.

Wikis and the culture of collaboration

By Moniqua Roberts

Wikis are changing the way we work together. Last month, I attended the "Introduction to Wikis" course that was offered through the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Center for Information Technology (CIT).   This course is just one example of the widespread interest in wikis across HHS.

In layman’s terms, a wiki is an online document that can be accessed by multiple people and edited directly. They provide users with the most recent version of the document up front, while still allowing access to older versions and edit histories. For many projects, wikis are more efficient than collaborating through email. Wikis can be used to promote creativity and transparency while encouraging participation and information sharing.

At NIH, Wikis are advancing communication, collaboration and even facilitating scientific advances. From authoring articles in their specific genre to editing entries for accuracy or sharing laboratory expertise, NIH scientists are using wikis for a wide range of activities. Wikis are also being used to communicate static content to communities, as well as day-to-day communication about team activities. 

But…like most technologies, you can’t roll out a Wiki and expect people to use it and magically create collaboration.  There must be a culture in which employees trust one another, adequate training is provided, and policies and procedures are necessary to bring the vision of Wikis to full fruition.

One of the biggest challenges is getting user buy-in. The value of creating a workspace that is supposed to cut across silos, geography, and time-zone differences is lost if everyone who needs to collaborate doesn’t learn to use the wiki and develop the habit of using it. Some people may hesitate to use the wiki because they are uncomfortable with the transparency of the work process or believe they won’t get credit for their work and ideas due to the more collaborative work process.  Additionally, procedures and policies need to be in place about how, when, and who can use the wiki to get any value out of it. Another consideration is that it can be difficult for a really large community to effectively edit one document, even on a wiki, but publishing a document for comment and asking for feedback is greatly facilitated.  

What has your agency done to facilitate the culture necessary for successful wikis?  What challenges remain?     

Developers and Designers Dive Into the Open Data Ocean

By Doug Joubert

What would it take to get folks to show up at 9:00 AM on a Saturday morning? Coffee, donuts, and the opportunity to plunge into a sea of open health datasets. On February 12, developers, designers, and researchers gathered to develop apps using public and private health care data-sets, over the course of one day, for the 2011 Health 2.0 Developer Challenge Code-a-thon.

The primary focus of the day was active coding. Participants were divided into teams and had access to a number Application Program Interfaces (APIs) and twenty public and private health care data-sets. My team, consisted of a program manager from NACCHO , two researchers, two analysts, and two coders. We planned and developed a community health information query system that linked community-based health data with data from the Health Indicators Warehouse (HIW). The HIW is a data hub with standardized health outcome and health determinant indicators along with associated evidence-based interventions. What makes the HIW so awesome is that it provides a user-friendly interface to national, state, and community health indicators data.

As demonstrated by the image to the right, the transition from concept to code can be a complex process. Even though my team did not win the code-a-thon, it was a fantastic opportunity to learn more about developing an app from the ground up, and the importance of cross discipline collaboration. The code-a-thon initiative is also an amazing way to engage non-coders like myself, in the development of apps.

This event was part of the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge , which is supported by HHS and organized by Health 2.0 . The goal of the event was to support the development of the HHS Community Health Data Initiative and the online Health 2.0 Developer Challenge while bringing the Health 2.0 Community together for rapid application development.

Events like the Code-a-thon can harness the power of open data to transform health care. Developers (and non-developers) can capitalize on the availability of data-sets to develop apps, much in the same manner that the Weather Channel uses open data from NOAA to develop widgets, by providing access to free, high quality data, without any intellectual property constraints. Watch the video below to watch HHS Chief Technology Officer, Todd Park, as he describes the public and private collaboration to build a "huge ecosystem of mojo," in an effort to "liberate data," "build super cool apps," and catalyze change through public engagement.

Social Media and…Theory?

by Tom Hipper 

In November of last year, I attended the mHealth Summit in Washington, D.C. Two things really struck me while I was there:

1. The future is bright with respect to technology and innovation in the world of health. From an Augmented Reality Tool, a headset worn by an EMT/medic designed to assist in providing advanced medical care in the field, to a Chemical Sensor Attachment that turns your cell phone into a portable hydrocarbon detector, the summit was filled with exciting new gadgets designed to improve our health and safety.

2. No matter how innovative the technology, we must not lose sight of a key ingredient to health: behavior change. While the interaction afforded by these devices can play a key role in interventions, merely placing a slick new device in people’s hands will not, in and of itself, change their behavior.

Ok, so what? And what does this have to do with social media?

Everything.

Just like the gadgets on display at the mHealth Summit, social media is a shiny, new tool for us to use in the always challenging, often rewarding, never-ending quest to improve the health of our nation. But as we embrace social media and begin thinking about the many creative ways we can utilize it, we must not forget the science behind behavior change. More specifically, when we use social media to communicate, we must not forget about the importance of communication theory.

Stop cringing and hear me out on this one.

Theory gets a bad rap in the applied world. It’s often seen as academic fluff. Broad, macro-level concepts thought up in the ivory tower, tested on college sophomores, and not applicable to the “real world.” Or, as a colleague of mine once said, “a bunch of hooey.” And while my days in graduate school confirmed that some theories out there fit these descriptions, many do not. In fact, some have been instrumental in changing behavior!

A good theory does a few very important things. Number one, it provides a framework for your message or intervention. It tells you what characteristics you need to know about your target audience, and what variables are likely to impact their behavior. Perhaps most importantly, it also allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your intervention and, subsequently, either replicate your success or improve upon your failures. And the good news? Theory can provide these benefits when we use social media. So as to rebuff the perception that theory is too, well, overly theoretical, let’s go ahead and apply one right now, shall we?

The Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM) (Witte, 1992; 1994) stems from the fear appeal literature and is based around two key variables: Threat and Efficacy. Threat is comprised of Susceptibility (do you think “threat x” will happen to you) and Severity (do you think “threat x” is serious enough to warrant your attention). Efficacy is comprised of Self Efficacy (do you believe you can perform the provided solution to “threat x”) and Response Efficacy (do you believe the provided solution will work in minimizing “threat x”). 

The theory posits that in order to produce the desired reaction in your audience, your message must: 1) Produce sufficiently high levels of both Threat and Efficacy and 2) Your messages should produce higher levels of Efficacy. If a message does not communicate sufficient levels of susceptibility or severity, your audience will likely disregard your message as not relevant to them.  If your message produces a level of threat, but a low level of efficacy, your audience will engage in “fear control” (denial or avoidance).  When your message contains both high threat and high efficacy, your audience is more likely to engage in “danger control” (constructive behavior to reduce the threat). Fortunately, the results have shown that following these recommendations in message design can indeed cause the desired health behavior change (Witte & Allen, 2000).

Let’s say you are designing messages about the importance of having a carbon monoxide detector in the home. With a little formative research, and the help of EPPM, you can determine where your audience currently stands with respect to Threat and Efficacy and design your social media messaging strategy accordingly. Do they not see CO poisoning as a likely threat? Emphasize Susceptibility in your messages. Do they think obtaining an alarm is too costly? Your messages should emphasize Efficacy by providing details on the many low-cost ways to obtain an alarm. After running these messages, you can evaluate their effectiveness by determining the extent to which Threat and Efficacy levels in your target audience have changed and, most importantly, the extent to which your messages actually changed behavior. And because you used a theory you are not only more likely to change behavior, but more likely to know exactly what caused that change.

The field of communication has taught us that merely providing information to your audience is rarely enough. Knowing your audience is key, and knowing what it takes to move them toward the desired behavior is even more important. Theory helps you do that. There may be many of you out there who see the constructs discussed above and think, “I already think about these things when creating messages, I just don’t use a theory.” I would implore those of you who fit this description to consider thinking about your messages in accordance with a behavior change theory such as EPPM. By explicitly thinking about Threat and Efficacy as they are described in EPPM, we as health communicators replace our gut feelings with a science that provides a blueprint for understanding our audience, designing messages for them, and determining precisely which factors caused any subsequent change.

So as we continue to utilize social media because of its unique ability to allow us to interact and converse with our audience, let us also consider how theory can help ensure that our conversations actually change their behavior.

Questions, comments, and experiences with theory (good and bad) are welcomed!

References

Witte, K. (1992). Putting the fear back into fear appeals: The extended parallel process model. Communication Monographs, 59(4), 329-349.

Witte, K. (1994). Fear control and danger control: A test of the extended parallel process model (EPPM). Communication Monographs, 61(2), 113-134.

Witte, K., & Allen, M. (2000). A meta-analysis of fear appeals: Implications for effective public health campaigns. Health Education & Behavior, 27(5), 591.

TOS Update: The Process for Signing and Now What?

by Read Holman 

“I agree to these terms and conditions.” These words are right next to a box that you’re required to ‘check’ when creating a new account on any given 3^rd party service such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others. This is the infamous fine print that no-one really reads. No one, that is, but our lawyers, and it’s within this fine print that ‘terms and conditions’ exist which the federal government can’t agree to. Most of you know that this then requires some legal negotiations that culminate into an amendment to these terms of service agreements (TOS) that we must sign before moving forward.

We’ve signed 28 of these TOS amendments now, most recently with the Blackberry App World , MapBox , and Ustream . You can find the full list of these tools at our TOS page.

Here’s how the process works: GSA does the legal leg-work for us. They negotiate a federal-friendly amendment to a tool’s TOS agreement. HHS then has to sign and get a counter-signature from that company. These signed agreements then apply to the entire Department. Tools that are already on GSA’s TOS page are (most of the time) fairly easy for us to then get signed at the Department level.

But what about tools that haven’t been negotiated by GSA? For those, we contact the company ourselves and have our general council talk with their lawyers. As a starting place for these conversations, GSA has made the model TOS template for negotiating amendments.

I’ve received requests for many tools that fall into this category. Reaching out to the company; finding the right person to talk to; explaining to that person the issue at hand; and then having their legal team talk and work with ours... It has proven difficult, and… a lot of work with few results thusfar. 

We recognize that TOS issues are an explicit hurdle that everyone faces in implementing new media technologies, and we hope that our addressing at the Department-level has proven the most efficient way to go. It is important to note that these agreements only address the legal barriers. Accessibility, privacy, security, and other concerns may persist, and those issues will need to be addressed upon each implementation of the tool in question.

While very big questions related to TOS are being discussed (such as: Why do we have to sign these if the Constitution recognizes Federal law superceding state law?), we continue to work with the different vendors to get legal barriers removed.

So now we have all these tools with legal barriers removed for implementation, and a new problem arises: What do they do?! Understanding best practices around each tools will take a village. Identifying and growing a network of those in the Department with experience with a give tool becomes an important component of building the collective wisdom of HHS.

Publications 2.0: Using Technology to Enhance Customer Experience

By Kathryn Hambleton 

SAMHSA’s publication distribution center maintains over 1,000 science-based behavioral health publications and ships over 13,000,000 products annually. The distribution of these publications is central to serving their mission and serving their core audience. Recently, SAMHSA brought together new media technologies to better carry out this service, and their online presence for publications ordering has been transformed into the SAMHSA Store.

Taking inspiration from Amazon.com, the SAMHSA Store delivers an engaging web-based “shopping” experience. The store features product categories to help visitors identify products that may interest them, including the 50 most popular products, recently added products, and a selection of featured timely publications.

The product pages (such as this National Suicide Prevention Lifeline magnet page) allow opportunities for shoppers to “Like” or “Tweet” about a given product, display tags to allow visitors to navigate to publications on similar products, and include the product’s intended audience. Each product page also includes a helpful section with both related products and relevant websites for additional information.

Delivering related websites is one way that the SAMHSA Store recognizes that not all products of value are items that can be ordered and shipped. In addition to websites, the site also shares other communication products with visitors, such as downloads, featured hotlines, and a locator for treatment centers. The store was also built with the flexibility to incorporate additional features such as ratings, commenting, and API development.

In more ways than one, the Store demonstrates that SAMHSA understands the needs of their customers and has used emerging technologies to adapt and improve the way those needs are met. SAMHSA is also continuing to improve the Store by soliciting feedback through various channels, including their Twitter and Facebook accounts as an extension of the customer service engagement.

• Visit the SAMHSA Store
• Read more about the project on GovLoop
• Learn more about customer service in government

What can your agency do to improve the services delivered to your customers? Where does your agency look for inspiration?

Strategies for Mobile Development: Highlights from a Federal Mobile Apps Webinar

By Doug Joubert

Mobile development and the delivery of information to mobile users is an emerging and quickly evolving field. While strategic and technological challenges exist, a number of federal agencies are leading in the development of mobile apps. On January 26, 2011, we heard from two of these agencies in a webinar on the direction of mobile efforts in the federal government. Here are some key points from it:

The webinar was put together by Mobomo and the National Technical Information Services (NTIS) in the Department of Commerce, which helps federal agencies design, develop, and deliver mobile strategies. The webinar featured representatives from the General Services Administration (GSA), and the Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) at the National Institutes of Health. 

GSA’s Gwynne Kostin highlighted the work of the GSA Program Management Office and its Mobile Apps Gallery, which includes apps developed by federal agencies. Apps in the gallery include traditional apps developed for the Apple (iOS) and the Blackberry (RIM) platforms; however, it also includes mobile optimized websites.

When it comes to developing mobile apps, Ms Kostin encourages agencies to focus primarily on what they are trying to accomplish with a mobile strategy. “The mobile app is not the goal. Your agency’s mission is the goal.” Ms Kostin highlighted text4baby , a successful texting program designed to promote maternal and child health and created through a public-private partnership.

In terms of supporting mobile app development, the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies is building a federal Community of Practice developed around mobile. At this time, the Community of Practice is only open to federal agencies. If you are interested in more information on this effort, please contact Ms Kostin.

Jody Engel with NIH’s Office of Dietary Supplements presented on her team’s efforts to develop a free mobile iPhone app for consumers called MyDS (Dietary Supplements). MyDS allows users to keep track of the vitamins, minerals, and other products they take and to access reliable, science-based information on dietary supplements. Internal analytics for the mobile app include the number of downloads, usage, the length of each session, and remote content updates.

One of the biggest obstacles in the development of the MyDS app was setting up an Apple developer account as an office within the federal government. At the time, Apple didn’t have a full process for handling development requests from federal agencies. Jody noted that Apple is now building a process and knowledge base that will help federal entities get their apps into the iPhone app store. For the time being, offices should contact the Apple Federal representative, the Apple iPhone iPad Federal Government Manager John DiTomasso at dito@apple.com.

Within HHS, our Office of General Council (OGC) has cleared our use of the Apple iOS; however, we are still working to sign agreements at the Department level for Blackberry (RIM) and Android OS.

Is your office thinking about mobile? What are your biggest barriers to moving forward? 

To access the slides and a recording of this webinar, go to this Mobomo blog post .

I Need a Viral Video – Fast!

By Michael Wilker

I get two kinds of requests on a daily basis: “Can you make me a viral video?” and “Can you tell me how much it’ll cost?” The answer to both of these questions is, unfortunately, “Well not exactly.”

Just like a viral agent (aka a virus) in the real world, it’s hard to predict where a viral video will pop up. Most viral videos fall into the categories of adorable, hilarious or musical. I’ve yet to see any of these genres in a government-produced marketing video, not because individuals in government lack these personality traits, but because government itself lacks these personality traits. The federal government, by its very nature, can’t be too cute or too funny in explaining policies and regulations.

But that doesn’t mean  a video can’t be shareable. This is different from viral. Shareable pertains to the quality of the production and the tuning of the message. Here is a high-quality video about Veterans Day produced by the Department of Veterans Affairs. They knew their primary audience, school-aged kids and their teachers, and delivered a message tailored to them. It has over 164,000 hits on YouTube. That’s a pretty good number and come next Veterans Day, because of the way it was scripted the same video can be pitched for more use. Likewise, HHS has produced award-winning documentaries and quality audience-focused messages in-house.

Quality of production and the precision of the message are the keys to making any marketing video sharable. So what does a quality production with a precise message cost? It depends. That’s not a chicken-out answer, it’s really true. Just like a house or a car purchase it depends on how many bells and whistles you want to tell your story.

Sometimes we use the saying, “You can have it fast, good or cheap. Pick two.” Often  “fast” and “cheap” are the default elements and we wonder why the video isn’t shareable. Video production is a team effort and teams of people cost money. If you have a message that needs to get out next week – well, that takes care of fast. Now, what’s your budget? If your answer is “not much”, then time may be the variable you want to control to increase the quality of any finished product.

I’ll cover how to make the most of your money in future installments. I look forward to your feedback.

Maps and Who's Mapping

By Kathryn Hambleton 

The work of this Department impacts Americans all over the country. Displaying information on maps can demonstrate relationship between sources of information, show off the great work your office is doing, and allow for people to quickly find information relevant to a particular locality. You can create basic maps that plot simple location points, or you can implement with more advanced features including regions with layered display options.

 Get started with mapping

Mapping involves first and foremost having the geo-located data appropriately organized and exported in the right file type: Usually an XML or KML. Without getting into the technical weeds here, just know that a map can only be as good as the data behind it! There are many 3rd-party technologies available that for mapping. HHS has signed TOS-amendments with, and thus clearing some legals barriers to using, Socrata and ZeeMaps. A TOS-amendment with MapBox is also in the works.

In addition to these tools, HHS has acquired an Enterprise License for the Google Maps API Premier that is available to all HHS offices and programs. If you have information that can be plotted on a map, and doing so can bring value to your site visitors, you should explore how you can display your information using the Google Maps.

Our Google Maps AP Premier page has more information to help you get started with Google Maps.

Who in HHS is using location?

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has used location-based data to display information from programs that are part of The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. For each of the below links, the map referenced is found at the bottom of that page.

• The Community College Consortia comprises five regional groups of more than 70 member community colleges in all 50 states.
• The Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program provides funding to selected communities to build and strengthen their health IT infrastructure and exchange capabilities.
• The Health Information Technology Extension Program consists of Health Information Technology Regional Extension Centers (RECs).

AIDS.gov has created a HIV/AIDS prevention & service provider locator widget using data from multiple federal agencies. Check it out:

ATSDR is using location to organize the Public Health Assessments & Health Consultations according to the state or U.S. territory and also by the ATSDR regions where they originated.

These are only a few examples of mapping being used in this Department. Are there other mapping examples in HHS? What do you think are the biggest barriers to implementation?.

Entering twenty-eleven (or is it two-thousand eleven?)

By Read Holman  

In the spirit of renewal that every New Year brings, we reflect back and we look forward. While the beginning of 2010 saw only a handful of leaders across the Department (hats off to CDC and NIH/NCI at the forefront), now individuals within offices across HHS have lessons learned and unique skills to share for the benefit of the community. The pockets of expertise are becoming less silo-d as knowledge spreads and the tide of information raises all boats.

New questions continue to drive conversation: How does old media integrate with new media? What’s the most effective way to empower individual programs while ensuring a unified Departmental effort? How do we best share lessons learned from others’ experiences? How can technology help  us interact with our stakeholders? What’s up with FedSpace?

The pace of today’s technological advancement promises plenty for us to get excited about. Geo-location. Gaming. Mash-ups. Mobile. Mobile. Mobile. So many emerging technologies backed by consumer (aka tax-payer) demand widen our attentions, but the focus on a strategy based on your office’s mission statement still drives the prioritization of our collective efforts. The only difference now is that there are more tools to sort through and prioritize.

We look forward to a year when new media will be strategically woven into the fabric of every communications plan. We’ll no longer jump onto platforms like twitter to be cool like our neighbor office; instead we’ll more deeply integrate audience analysis, health communications theory, and a full strategic plan to maximize each technology.

Twenty-eleven (or is it two-thousand-eleven?) looks to be an exciting year at HHS. Here at the HHS Center for New Media, we will continue to offer new opportunities to build community and share experience. And we will continue to explore new territory in dealing with the tough issues that are unique to government usage of new media technologies.  We look forward to working with you all to grow the HHS Center for New Media and to help increase the effectiveness and the efficiency of the Department that directly touches the lives of every American.

There are always competing priorities. Should we focus on TOS issues? Is guidance on a specific platform needed? How about a brown bag series? Tell us what you would like to see from the HHS Center for New Media in 2011 by submitting a comment to this post.

How does the HHS Center for New Media Produce its Podcasts?

For the last several months, the HHS Center for New Media has featured a podcast series sharing interviews with members of the HHS community. These interviews focus on projects from and for HHS to inspire and inform future ideas. The podcast series itself is no different.

Podcasting can be an inexpensive and engaging way of sharing information. However, producing a podcast series requires commitment and organization. The hhsCNM goes behind the scenes to share the production process with other aspiring podcast producers.

How does the HHS Center for New Media Produce its Podcasts? This final podcast features an interview with Nicholas Garlow in which he shares his experience and expertise in producing the HHS New Media Podcast series. Read Transcript | Browse Previous Podcasts

If you have any questions regarding this podcast or want to get in touch about a project you’re working on in HHS, please email newmedia@hhs.gov.

How is SAMHSA engaging with the public to shape their strategic initiatives?

By Nicholas Garlow 

Nicholas has come to the HHS Center for New Media to explore new and innovative media tools that members of the HHS community are building and using.  This is the first of a series of podcasts and blogs that highlights those new media efforts.

Previous podcasts focused on iCOP (and the idea of ideation) and the yellow bubbles on HealthCare.gov (and the idea of customer feedback). 

The Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration, SAMHSA, has brought both those ideas together to shape their Strategic Initiatives.

For two months this fall, SAMHSA used the ideation tool User Voice to allow the public to submit ideas, comments, and votes on SAMHSA’s Strategic Initiative Document. 

The response was overwhelming, and SAMHSA is now using bringing that feedback full circle to better develop their document before official publication. 

How is SAMHSA engaging with the public to shape their strategic initiatives? This podcast introduces you to SAMHSA’s use of User Voice. I spoke with Andrew Wilson of SAMHSA about the tool, the public response they received, and how they are using that feedback to develop their initiatives. Read Transcript

If you have any questions regarding this podcast or want to get in touch about a project you’re working on in HHS, please email newmedia@hhs.gov.

How is HHS opening health data to spur innovation?

By Nicholas Garlow 

Nicholas has come to the HHS Center for New Media to explore new and innovative media tools that members of the HHS community are building and using.  This is the first of a series of podcasts and blogs that highlights those new media efforts.

As part of the Open Government Initiative, HHS is opening health data to become more transparent, participatory, and collaborative.

By releasing raw datasets, free for the public to use and free from intellectual property constraint, HHS is spurring a marketplace of new ideas and new applications. Two ways HHS is doing this is one, through the Community Health Data Initiative, and secondly, the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge.

How is HHS opening health data to spur innovation? In this podcast, I spoke with HHS’ Chief Technology Officer, Todd Park, to understand how opening health data and sponsoring challenges is spurring innovation, creating new applications, and promoting the mission of HHS. Read Transcript

If you have any questions regarding this podcast or want to get in touch about a project you’re working on in HHS, please email newmedia@hhs.gov.

How is the FDA using texting to reach their audience?

By Nicholas Garlow 

Nicholas has come to the HHS Center for New Media to explore new and innovative media tools that members of the HHS community are building and using.  This is the first of a series of podcasts and blogs that highlights those new media efforts.

According to Pew Internet Research, 72% of American adults send and receive text messages. The Break the Chain campaign recognized that when trying to reach retailers and the public. 

The Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) at FDA created the Break the Chain mobile campaign, allowing mobile users to subscribe to receive text messages about the new law. Subscribers receive information about the regulation, participate in quizzes, and provide feedback on the campaign. All on their mobile phones.

How is the FDA using texting to reach their audience? This podcast introduces you to the Break the Chain mobile campaign at the FDA. I spoke with Sanjay Koyani and Ann Aikin of CTP to understand how the campaign started, how they’ve marketed it, and how they’re working to engage mobile citizens.  Read Transcript │ Read more on Break the Chain

If you have any questions regarding this podcast or want to get in touch about a project you’re working on in HHS, please email newmedia@hhs.gov.

How are the yellow bubbles improving HealthCare.gov?

By Nicholas Garlow 

Nicholas has come to the HHS Center for New Media to explore new and innovative media tools that members of the HHS community are building and using.  This is the first of a series of podcasts and blogs that highlights those new media efforts.

 Imagine having thousands of people reviewing your content 24 hours a day. The yellow bubble tool on HealthCare.gov makes it possible for people to make recommendations to improve the site.

The tool allows site visitors to say whether they like a page or not and then provides an opportunity for open-ended feedback.

So far, the site has received over 15,000 comments.

How are the yellow bubbles improving HealthCare.gov? This fifth podcast introduces you to the yellow bubble tool on HealthCare.gov.  I spoke with site manager Craig Stoltz to understand how the yellow bubble is helping to improve the site’s content, design, and in the long term, overall usability.  Read transcript  |  Read more on HealthCare.gov

How is iCOP supporting ideation practices across government?

By Nicholas Garlow 

Nicholas has come to the HHS Center for New Media to explore new and innovative media tools that members of the HHS community are building and using.  This is the first of a series of podcasts and blogs that highlights those new media efforts.

Ideation tools are solving problems. The Ideation Community of Practice (iCOP) is working to improve the way government agencies implement and use those tools.

Ideation (ideas + generation) is a process by which government agencies are creating, discussing and prioritizing ideas for implementation.  Ideation tools allow agencies to communicate and share those ideas online.

Last year, HHS wrote a white paper on the use of ideation tools.  Soon after, iCOP was developed.  The group now meets monthly to discuss best practices and shared topics of interest. 

To learn more about iCOP or read the white paper that HHS presented on ideation, email Elizabeth.Kittrie@hhs.gov. 

How is ICOP supporting ideation practices across government? This fourth podcast introduces you to the Ideation Community of Practice.  I spoke with Elizabeth Kittrie of HHS to discuss how iCOP formed and how it is helping to improve government functions.  Read transcript

If you have any questions regarding this podcast series or want to get in touch about a project you’re working on at HHS, please email newmedia@hhs.gov.

How does AIDS.gov Manage its Blog?

By Nicholas Garlow 

Nicholas has come to the HHS Center for New Media to explore new and innovative media tools that members of the HHS community are building and using.  This is the first of a series of podcasts and blogs that highlights those new media efforts.

The success of the AIDS.gov blog is a product of their planning. The blog has a purpose, a process, and an audience. The procedures the AIDS.gov team have developed and streamlined over time have helped the blog grow in the three years since launch.

Their blog is part of a comprehensive communication strategy, and is integrated with their other new media channels. Each blog post is repurposed into a podcast and promoted through updates from the AIDS.gov Twitter account and AIDS.gov Facebook Page.

Aids.gov is committed to setting an example of effective use of new media, and they continuously monitor their success, on and off their blog. They even measure their efficiency in accomplishing each task. Their model is just one for managing a blog, and it may not work for every team, but understanding their processes may help your team better plan for your own.

How does AIDS.gov manage its blog? This third podcast introduces you to the AIDS.gov blog. I spoke with Miguel Gomez, Director of AIDS.gov, and Michelle Samplin-Salgado of the AIDS.gov team to discuss their blog managing processes and insights.  Read transcript

If you have any questions regarding this podcast series or want to get in touch about a project you’re working on at HHS, please email newmedia@hhs.gov.

How is Pillbox making government data accessible to the public? 

By Nicholas Garlow 

Nicholas has come to the HHS Center for New Media to explore new and innovative media tools that members of the HHS community are building and using.  This is the first of a series of podcasts and blogs that highlights those new media efforts.

Pillbox is opening up government data. Government agencies, communities who need to solve challenges, members of the medical field and public citizens can all benefit from this application. Project Manager David Hale designed Pillbox with the intent to make government data accessible and usable for the public.

The web based program allows you to visually identify unknown medications online. The process of building the tool has proven to Hale that when you bring together the expertise of the government and the needs of the public, you create a better product than you expect.

How is Pillbox making government data accessible to the public? This second podcast introduces you to Pillbox. I spoke with Hale to better understand how cross-collaboration between government agencies and the public can lead to success. Read transcript

If you have any questions regarding this podcast series or want to get in touch about a project you’re working on at HHS, please email newmedia@hhs.gov.

My Introduction to HHS New Media

By Nicholas Garlow 

Nicholas has come to the HHS Center for New Media to explore new and innovative media tools that members of the HHS community are building and using.  This is the first of a series of podcasts and blogs that highlights those new media efforts.

Over the next few months, I’ll be talking to different members of HHS to better understand how new media tools are playing a role in carrying out the Department's mission and everyday functions.  These conversations may cover social media, web design, or program specific tools. One purpose of the HHS Center for New Media (hhsCNM) is to highlight new media efforts across the Department, and I hope through these discussions to show how these ideas and projects may be useful to you.

The hhsCNM will release audio or video podcasts on the projects and tools I cover.  In my conversations and research with HHS employees, we'll be discussing how various tools are improving cross-collaboration and cross-communication, both internally and with the public.  

What is the HHS Center for New Media? This first podcast introduces you to the hhsCNM.  I spoke with New Media Strategist, Read Holman, to understand what our mission and goals are.   Read transcript

If you have any questions regarding this project or want to get in touch about a project you’re working on, please email newmedia@hhs.gov.

The National Library of Medicine’s New API Portal

(excerpt from the Open HHS Blog by Todd Park)

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is the world’s knowledge center for health and medicine, supporting a broad range of electronic information resources that are freely available to the public. Enhancing the use of these resources via web-based and mobile applications has been an important goal, consistent with HHS’s Open Government objectives. With this in mind, NLM has just announced the launch of a web portal for one-stop access to an exciting array of NLM Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

These APIs represent a set of tools that amp up the power of NLM resources by enabling other websites and applications to interact directly with them. The practical benefit of these APIs is that they enable developers to build supercool applications that can tap NLM’s vast consumer health information repositories, research databases, and search engines. 

Read the full article on the Open HHS Blog 

Also check out the directory of NLM Databases & Electronic Resources.

HHSinnovates

By Read Holman

HHSinnovates is an award program that recognizes and encourages innovative efforts across HHS. The goal is to make our work for the American people more responsive, more efficient and more effective...and to recognize the employees who help accomplish those goals.

Twice a year, up to six awards will be issued to innovators and teams of innovators who have either (1) generated the most significant innovation successes (Adoption Ready Innovations), or (2) developed exploratory innovations that did not yet achieve the expected target outcomes, but yielded significant new knowledge and organizational learning (Explorative Innovations). Cash awards of up to $2,500 may be presented to as many as seven key innovators for each awarded innovation.

HHS is blogging

By Kathryn Hambleton

There are many groups in HHS that have launched blogs in the past couple of years and there are many more that are considering a launch.

If your office is among the many considering a blog, check out our new HHS blog guidance to know what consideration should be made before starting.

The blogging platform is not for every office. The most effective blogs cultivate their own identity through the conversational tone of the posts, engage their audience through comments, and are responsive to their readers and the overall dialogue in the blogosphere.

Is your office already blogging? Check out what others are doing on their blogs, and see how their strategies are similar and different to yours. For the directory of HHS blogs, see Whooo's Blogging at HHS.

If there’s a blog’s managing team that you want to connect with to learn about their experience, contact us for more information.