The theme of the 2023 annual virtual CHASM conference is “Health is Social: Leveraging the Metaverse to Improve Public Health.” A theme throughout the conference will be the role of social connectedness in health and ways we can leverage the metaverse to strengthen social ties, social support, and tilt social norms toward healthy choices, healthy lifestyles, and healthy communities. This conference will feature keynote speakers and panelists who are studying and innovating tools of the metaverse, including social media, virtual reality, and digital technologies to help us connect in ways that solve health problems.

accessible best practices for social media content and digital communications

Digital media are omnipresent in modern life, but the science on the impact of digital media on behavior is still in its infancy. There is an emerging evidence base of how to use digital media for behavior change. Strategies to change behavior implemented using digital technology have included a variety of platforms and program strategies, all of which are potentially more effective with increased frequency, intensity, interactivity, and feedback. It is critical to accelerate the pace of research on digital platforms, including social media, to understand and address its effects on human behavior. The purpose of the current paper is to provide an overview and describe methods in this emerging field, present use cases, describe a future agenda, and raise central questions to be addressed in future digital health research for behavior change. Digital media for behavior change employs three main methods: (1) digital media interventions, (2) formative research using digital media, and (3) digital media used to conduct evaluations. We examine use cases across several content areas including healthy weight management, tobacco control, and vaccination uptake, to describe and illustrate the methods and potential impact of this emerging field of study. In the discussion, we note that digital media interventions need to explore the full range of functionality of digital devices and their near-constant role in personal self-management and day-to-day living to maximize opportunities for behavior change. Future experimental research should rigorously examine the effects of variable levels of engagement with, and frequency and intensity of exposure to, multiple forms of digital media for behavior change.

Graphic of layers - 1) what you share, 2) what your behavior tells them, 3) what the machine thinks about you

A National Survey Sponsored By Hopelab and Well Being Trust 2018

Diffusion of Innovations internet-style

Bob Belinoff brings social marketing into the digital age.

A wiki on Web 2.0 best practices for nonprofits created by Michelle Martin from the Bamboo Project Blog