Public Health: The Communication Initiative Network

I'm back to school and back to blogging. I ran across The Communication Initiative Network today and thought it was worth mentioning here. Although it is not a "pure" health site, their site is about social and economic development and I see that as integrally tied in with public health. After all, the site has information about avian flu, AIDS/HIV and polio.

Their web 2.0 use is nicely integrated into the flow of their site and their mission. One example of this is their use of RSS feeds. The most current articles are called "most currently shared knowledge." I can't tell for sure but I think this is a place where their members can post press releases and articles.

They are also using web 2.0 to define their target market. For example, I don't even understand how to answer the poll. They want to know how important a bivalent OPV vaccine is to their community. To answer the poll you need to join the community. To join the community, you need to answer many questions about your organization, it's mission and your role. After that you may or may not be approved to join the community.

For an organization with a specific mission and a narrow target audience, the web 2.0 applications that they have put into place will help them to attract the members that will make a contribution to their mission, not detract from it.

Bravo! More is not always better. If average Joe and average Sue can't really contribute to your mission, you don't want them as members of your social network.

If The Communication Initiative Network wants to expand their public relations a bit, they could add some podcasts and videocasts. Anyone see any other web 2.0 opportunities they are not taking advantage of?

If your organization has a narrow target market, how are you using web 2.0 applications to attract the right people and groups to your site?

diagKNOWsis

diagKNOWsis was started by Trisha Torry after she was diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma. It turned out that she never had lymphoma and she found this out through her, "research, networking, and the partnership (she) established with (her) second-opinion oncologist."

Now she is about.com's expert on patient empowerment. What a cool title! There is a discussion forum associated with this of course. I was drawn into an interesting thread started by Dr. L about the state of healthcare, health insurance, and the affodability of being a dr. these days. It's an anonymous forum so whether you are a physician, patient or work at an insurance company, you can add your 2 cents.

BTW - I found out about this on CNN/health. Click on the Torrey tab for Trish's article.

Inspiration From Relay For Life

I participated in a Relay for Life last year. It's a 24 hour fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. At the time I was impressed with the structure and organization of the event. They had lots of fun activities like an egg toss, noisemaker lap, and at some point they got a bunch of men to dress up as women. Hilarity ensued. They mix this fun with ceremony and education. It's a great experience if you haven't been to one yet. I recommend going during the luminaria lap. It's quite inspiring.

If you go to their website, ACS is integrating social media applications in a very organized, structured and fun way too. For example, along with podcasts available at itunes, they have a section on recommended music for the event using playlist.com. People can add suggestions which are moderated. Something to think about if you've been holding back using social media applications because you wouldn't have enough control. ACS has the right idea here in that they are allowing participation and maintaining editorial control.

They also have an RSS feed for updates to the site. There is a blog where you can post ideas for local fundraising efforts - what worked and what didn't. The cool thing is that they don't call it a blog, it's called HowTo-Do This Fundraiser. It's true that I would call it something else, but I do give them points for leaving out the word "blog". For this site it's just jargon that doesn't need to be there.

I'll have to make a note to clean up the jargon on all of my pages...

Web 2.0 Directory

Go2Web20.net is a collection of Web 2.o web sites. So far they have about 2,500 sites listed. Go2Web2.0 has a visually appealing, simple design and makes an interesting sound (today I am easily amused). To explore the site, I recommend using the "Select Tag" feature at the top of the page. A beautiful green cloud of tags appears. If you choose "health", you'll get about 25 results. More than enough to keep you busy this summer.

They also have a search box which is less useful. When I type in "health", I get one result - a site called revolutionhealth.com. Typing in "heal" gets me an additional site called healia.com.

Wouldn't it be great if the tags were indexed?

Other than that it's a really nice set up.