Social media sites aren't just for networking anymore. UCLA is now using them to support health care education.
The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health has given UCLA a $1.1 million grant for the school to test the effectiveness of social media on teen awareness of health care.
According to UCLA's School of Public Health, an average teen spends over nine hours a week on social networking sites. The school is partnering up with Health Net of California to tap into social networking sites in order to inform teenage users how to effectively use health care.
"Over 90 percent of teens today use social networking sites, not just to interact with their peers but also to get information about issues that are important to them," stated Michael Prelip, a professor of community health at UCLA's School of Public Health in a press release. "This intervention will provide important clues about the effectiveness of social media in influencing adolescents' understanding of their health care rights, responsibilities, and benefits so that they can become good health care consumers."
The two-year project will attempt to decrease emergency room visits by adolescents by using two different methods. One will be to use social media sites as intervention and another will be a “usual care” intervention. Trials will be used to test the effectiveness of both methods.
UCLA was approached by Health Net two years ago to initiate the project. The study will involve 8,000 Medicaid and Health Families beneficiaries.
While most teens have health insurance, they have little experience how to use it, says Deborah Glik, the project's principal investigator.
