Social media has been playing an important part in the swine flu epidemic, which public health experts worry will turn into a pandemic (an epidemic that crosses many countries).
When I was the Risk Communication Director for the Indiana State Department of Health, half of my time was spent talking about the influenza pandemic — pan flu — and what we could do to communicate during a pandemic. I had a staff of public information officers, and we came up with all sorts of ways to communicate with the media.
We had email, cell phones, and Blackberries, and all of our strategies relied on us being able to have access to those email servers and being able to get news out to the state media outlets, who would then take our news and push it to the top of the news cycle, thus insuring our message would be prominent. Which is great if we were living in 1995.
But they were all the tools in the toolbox for communicating about the impending bird flu.
“People need to quit calling it bird flu,” said more than a few docs and epidemiologists one day. I had made the mistake of calling it bird flu in a meeting one day. (The H5N1 bird flu in Asia was the big fear in 2006.)
“But that’s what people are calling it already,” I countered.
“So?” they all said, in that way educated smart people can. “We just need to educate people to call it pan flu, because by the time it becomes a pandemic, it won’t be from birds, it will be transmitted through people.”
“We’ll spend all our time educating people on not calling it bird flu that we’ll waste our energy we could be using to educate the people.”
But my pleas fell on deaf ears, and so we called it pan flu. “Pan flu” this, “pan flu” that.
Except nobody’s calling it “pan flu” now. We’re calling it swine flu. And that’s the name that stuck, unless you’re from Israel (they’re calling it the Mexico Flu).
So the health department is calling it swine flu, and after three days of no news, they finally put up a press release on their website, and a joint Twitter account with the Indiana Department of Homeland Security.
Social media has taught us all a few lessons when it comes to crisis communication and rapid response, whether you’re in a government agency or the corporate setting.
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(UPDATE)
A few links to articles I’ve written on using social media for crisis communication.
Award winning New York playwright & Theatre Authority Dr. Larry Myers premieres his play
“Pandemic Play” in Rancho Peniquitos, California
his West Coast office of RWM Playwrights Lab is at 14214 dalhousie Road
c/o Dr. Jo Punn
San Diego Ca
Dr. Myers teaches at St. John’s University in NYC & is a social activist concerned with Vincentian issues homeless povert immigration
He previously wrote a play about San Diego fires
called “Fire Eaters at Antarctica” as well as ‘major warfare at Lawrence Welk, Ca.”
he has had 2 summer long reps in san Francisco at the March & Exit and a retrospective of his plays at John Raitt Theater on Hollywood Blvd in LA
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Looks like the Obama administration’s expertise in Web 2.0 has not trickled down to the state and local levels. Social Media is such a good option to educate the public.
Bill’s last blog post..What Would You Do With A 25hr Day?