On 6 Jan 2016 we held what may have been the first national #PublicHealthHour in the world. See previous blog to read the background. Tweets posted during the #PublicHealthHour (12.30-13.30) are collected in a Storify.

This blog post provides a summary of the hour, plus details of how to join the next #PublicHealthHour, 3 Feb 2016, 11AM-noon (*** note change in time ***), which will be run as a Webex webinar with tweeting, with @CyclingSurgeon Prof Chris Oliver.

Continue reading “#ScotPublicHealth: summary of our first #PublicHealthHour (6.1.16)” →

Early January 2016 Melissa Sweet, curator of @WePublicHealth approached me to guest edit the @WePublicHealth twitter feed 11 to 17 Jan 2016. This was after I had run a survey based on a survey on her Croakey Blog.

Read the #ScotPublicHealth survey results here (21 respondents).

Being guest editor was a great opportunity to learn from the @WePublicHealth community (over 7,500 followers, administered out of Australia, but with a global following), and to share my own ideas around Public Health and those of #ScotPublicHealth. We had just run a #ScotPublicHealth #PublicHealthHour (initial Storify here, blog to follow shortly on this page), so had a lot of ideas.

As I explained previously on this blog, my plan was to run with 4 themes:

“something old, something new, someone followed, and a hint of #ScotPublicHealth”

The Storify summary of the week is structured under these 4 headings. Read the rules of engagement on the WePublicHealth page.

So what happened?

Continue reading “My week guest editing global Public Health Twitter feed @WePublicHealth” →

I’m excited to announce that I will be guest editing global @WePublicHealth Twitter feed 11-17 January.

While guest editing I plan to look at 4 themes, seeking input from Public Health colleagues around the world:

“something old, something new, someone followed, and a hint of #ScotPublicHealth”

Tweets on these four themes will be labelled with:

• #PublicHealthArchive (something old – expanding this Storify to look at public health progress across the world from the past 2 centuries)
• #PublicHealthNews (looking at Public Health stories from around the world). Let’s see if we, collectively, can produce a global #PublicHealth report for 2016, structured perhaps around the Faculty of Public Health‘s 9 areas of Public Health . I will gather the best tweets in a Storify. Here’s how I put it on Twitter last night (archive images from Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Glasgow page on Henry Littlejohn’s Report of the Sanitary Condition of Edinburgh, 1865):

• #PublicHealthTag (like the playground game, in an attempt to network with Public Health colleagues across the world)
• #ScotPublicHealth (stories from public health in Scotland, or shared by the Scottish Public Health community)

Please share ideas using these hashtags, for inclusion throughout the week (11-17 Jan).

Graham Mackenzie 8.1.16 

It’s good to experiment. The idea of #ScotPublicHealth and a #PublicHealthHour emerged out of discussions during December 2015.

Our first #PublicHealthHour on social media has been scheduled for the first full working day of 2016 (6.1.16). Information has been circulated on Twitter, and in the real world through Public Health teams. Some of the information shared is shown at the end of this post.

It remains to be seen whether colleagues will be able to access Twitter at work, and how many will engage. What is clear, however, is that social media is increasingly important for professionals, patients and the public. Eric Levi, ENT surgeon, puts it well in two blog posts – one on a “social media epidemic” among patients, the other on a medical college slow to respond to a wave of criticism over the festive period. During 2016 we’ll use #ScotPublicHealth to work out how best to engage with all audiences using social media. If you can’t take part in the Twitter hour then you can complete a survey instead.

The first #ScotPublicHealth #PublicHealthHour has four main objectives:

1. To help the Public Health community network more effectively (by and across topic, discipline and geography)
2. To identify topics for ongoing discussion (as a community and in a series of blogs)
3. To establish the best ways to use social media (eg Twitter vs Facebook), and current level of skills within the community
4. To identify other events and outputs beyond social media (eg a WebEx on using Twitter, a session at the next Public Health conference, an email list)

Our questions are structured around these objectives. They’re listed below as tweets scheduled for noon, 5.1.16 (a day ahead of Twitter hour). I have provided abbreviated examples within the first few tweets. Participants will have more characters to play with, as don’t need to repeat question.

Continue reading “#ScotPublicHealth: planning for our first #PublicHealthHour 6.1.2016, 12.30-1.30PM” →

The aim was to gather information that would be of interest generally to healthcare professionals (and beyond).

Many thanks to everyone who completed this SurveyMonkey survey. Read full results and a summary below. Methods and further details are provided at the end of this post.

Continue reading “Tying up 2015” →