JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Social media can raise visibility, share timely and tailored information, engage stakeholders’ offline and online network interactions, and build social capital among community partners. Despite such utility, community leaders and community health workers (CHWs) have utilized social media inconsistently as part of their public health outreach activities, potentially limiting the promotion of community projects and hindering the visibility of partnership building.

Objective:

The objective of the study was two-fold: (1) to explore community leaders’ and CHWs’ attitudes toward use of social media to address health inequity in their communities through a Community-Academic Partnership and (2) to evaluate the analytics and examine type of social media messaging produced in a three-year period.

Methods:

We conducted structured interviews with 40 CHWs and 51 community leaders across 20 Local Health Equity Action Teams (LHEATs) in 22 Kansas counties to assess attitudes and preferences on communication strategies. The academic team in this Community-Academic Partnership then assisted LHEATs to set up social media pages and provided content and technical support, including a 7-day, paid media campaign to support Medicaid re-enrollment. We assessed content of a random sample of media posts and evaluated reach using Facebook analytics from May 2022 to May 2025.

Results:

Interviews revealed three themes: 1) LHEATs blended traditional channels (face‑to‑face, radio, local newspapers) with social media, with Facebook most used; 2) leaders leveraged personal networks to amplify messages; and 3) participants sought clear separation between personal and professional accounts and audiences. In terms of the social media outcomes, of the 20 LHEATs, 11 established social media accounts in collaboration with the research team. Community leaders posted a total of 999 posts during this three-year period. The social media accounts amassed 1,732 followers (mean=144.33, SD=78.01), 710 accounts followed (mean=64.55, SD=74.52), and 1,241 page likes (mean=124.70, SD=60.65). Collectively, these pages generated a total reach of 158,697 (M=160.79, SD=693.36), 205,854 impressions (mean=225.96, SD=1080.65), 8,978 engagements (mean=9.05, SD=38.26), and 11,422 clicks (mean=11.46, SD=49.86). Of these impressions, 13.1% (n=26,994) occurred during the 7-day paid media campaign. Finally, a content analysis from randomly selected posts showed that most addressed community cohesion and access to community resources, including health, housing, and nutrition.

Conclusions:

Integrating social media into a statewide CAP is a viable approach. Academic partners can provide capacity training to facilitate and support community partners’ role in leading, managing, and creating content for their social media accounts to increase reach and engagement. Community leaders and CHWs can leverage social media to address community priorities. Paid social media has the potential to accelerate this outreach.