Social Media Campaign as a Tool for Patient Education of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

Abstract

Public awareness campaigns have played a crucial role in improving the health of communities, as they directly affect people's perception and behavior towards a specific topic, especially on disease prevention and health promotion. This can be seen in campaigns focused on, for example, infectious disease prevention such as HIV, tuberculosis, dengue, and more recently, COVID-19. Formerly, awareness campaigns took a very traditional approach using printed promotional materials, in-person conferences, and television and radio commercials as their primary way of reaching their target audience. This chapter describes an alternative method for reaching new audiences, in a society where social media has taken over as the public's main source of information and entertainment. These platforms can be used to extend important public health information to connect with and educate the public. The authors believe that this approach may increase the public's response towards emerging public health concerns as well as aid the digitalization of medicine through the evolution of telemedicine.