Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Jun 10, 2020
Date Accepted: Dec 31, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Use of #SaludTues Tweetchats for Dissemination of Culturally Relevant Information and Engagement on Latino Health Equity
ABSTRACT
Background:
Latinos comprise 18% of the U.S. adult population and large share of youth, yet continue to experience inequities that perpetuate health disparities. To engage Latinos in advocacy for health equity based on this population’s heavy share of smartphone, social media, and Twitter users, Salud America! (SA!) launched the #SaludTues Tweetchat series. In this paper we explore the use of #SaludTues to promote Latino health equity.
Objective:
Our aims are: determine who participates in #SaludTues Tweetchats; understand if these chats serve as an effective tool to boost online dissemination of culturally relevant information; and determine if #SaludTues drives traffic back to additional health equity information and actions on SA!’s website. We also aim to share our own experiences and present a step-by-step guide of how Tweetchats are planned, developed, promoted and executed.
Methods:
We explore Tweetchat data collected between 2014-2018 using Symplur and Google Analytics to identify groups of stakeholders and web traffic. Network analysis, natural language processing, and mapping tools are also used to derive insights from this series of chats.
Results:
We conducted 187 chats with 24,609 reported users, 177,466 tweets, and more than 1.87 billion impressions using the hashtag #SaludTues during this span, demonstrating effective dissemination of and exposure to culturally relevant information. Most participants came from Texas, California, New York and Florida. Traffic to the SA! website was higher on Tuesdays than any other day of week, suggesting that #SaludTues Tweetchats acted effectively as a website traffic-driving tool.
Conclusions:
Carefully planned, culturally relevant tweetchats like #SaludTues can be a powerful tool for public health practitioners and advocates to engage audiences on Twitter around health issues, advocacy, and policy solutions for Latino health equity. Further information is needed to determine the effect that #SaludTues tweetchats have on self and collective efficacy for Latino health equity.
Citation
