Improving Health Promotion Through the Integration of Technology, Crowdsourcing, and Social Media

Abstract

As Internet accessibility and technological innovations continue to increase communication, new opportunities have emerged to leverage these tools to improve health promotion practice. Advances and utilization of collaborative Internet communication, or social media, have provided global connectivity on an unprecedented scale. Using these innovations to leverage the collective intellect of online communities for specific goals, crowdsourcing is an approach that has the potential to solve complex public health problems. Due to the novelty of crowdsourcing implementations and the relative infancy of its application within public health, it is necessary to examine examples to facilitate practitioner conceptualization and application. This article details the development and application of a crowdsourced effort leveraging social media and technology to assist in relief efforts during Hurricane Harvey. Furthermore, the article presents examples corresponding to a typology of crowdsourcing for public health, including Knowledge Discovery and Management, Distributed Human Intelligence Tasking, Broadcast Search, and Peer-Vetted Creative Production problems. Leveraging these innovative applications has positive implications for health promotion practice, including improved intervention development and evaluation, increased multidisciplinary collaboration, and enhanced facilitation of communication, information exchange, and support.