Awesome news just floated my way yesterday! First of all, I’m pretty excited about the upcoming 2010 mHealth Summit being held in Washington, DC again this November. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) really did some nice upgrades to the website for this second go-round and have some distinguished speakers on the roster to discuss the advancement around mobile health.

Now onto the great news! Students interested in attending the mHealth Summit now have an opportunity to go free of charge. A special Student Pass has been developed and it’s available on a first come, first served basis. So if you are a student in the field of public/community health or related field – please feel free to apply and/or spread the word!

I’m hoping to attend this year since I missed it the first time. And if you’re new to the concept of using mobile technology for health – check out a presentation I did last year introducing the possibilities.

Recently I had the privilege to attend the 3^rd annual Sex::Tech conference hosted by ISIS, inc. The conference was held in San Francisco, CA which is appropriate given the amount of work they have done in the area in regards to sexual and public health. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Sex::Tech (now, now – don’t blush too hard) is a meeting of the minds surrounding issues related to sexual health, technology/new media and young people. It was absolutely mind blowing to listen to the current state of sex education and related issues straight from the mouths of the young people that are being affected. Not from adults who think they know what’s going on – definitely a difference there. I mean seriously, I just turned 28 and I felt like I was a senior citizen with the things I was hearing. With all due respect, no 300 page CDC report could touch this kind of community/demographic insight.

Day one of the conference kicked off with a panel discussion consisting of college age students discussing their experiences with sex education growing up and relevant issues of how to reshape sex education in the classrooms of the future. Topics ranged from mixing boys/girls together for classes to incorporating attention to the growing number of openly identifying LGBT teens. No matter where you sit on the spectrum of acceptance – you cannot ignore the statistics and the issues taking place with our young people today regarding HIV/AIDS and other STD infections. The mere fact that many young people don’t consider oral sex as…sex….is a problem. As my college human sexuality professor would tell us: “Anything you can put something, you can get something”.

The rest of the day consisted of breakout sessions and a plenary session from sponsoring organizations discussing what they do and the relevant issues they are working hard diligently on. One of the organizations I was really proud of was MTV for becoming part of the engagement and conversation surrounding an issue that affects their core audience. Jason Rzepka, VP of Public Affairs at MTV Networks, (who also won a PopTech award that morning) was there to discuss their collaboration with the Kaiser Family Foundation (also in attendance) on their GYT (Get Yourself Tested/Talking) campaign. The day ended with an awesome wine tasting meet and greet at the Press Club in downtown SF. I hung out with one of my favorite people, Amy Jussel of Shaping Youth for most of the conference – this is definitely a relevant conference for her as she focuses on the effects of marketing and media on young people. Check out her three part interview with Deb Levine, Director of ISIS, Inc.

Alongside my friend Leslie Bradshaw, I gave a presentation looking at online engagement strategies for public health:

I was also really excited to get Deb on camera as she closed out the conference with some great thoughts.

And finally an interview with ISIS’ Youth Marketing Manager who is very into public health and new ideas, Margaret Lucas:

I thought the event was well organized with great opportunities to learn about fantastic campaigns and projects that are impacting the landscape of public health through sexual education innovation. I’m glad that this conference is moving forward because for alot of sexual health education and prevention initiatives, we have not been paying attention to the people that are in the middle of the problems. Sex::Tech allows an opportunity for those working in the field to hear about the experiences of young people and how to better shape programs for the future.

I just got back from a great trip out to Los Angeles for a thought provoking roundtable discussion centered on health journalism and the health blogosphere. The event was sponsored by the California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships/University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication. I absolutely love meeting new people and learning from them – so the fact that this was my first time to L.A. and with a group of health/medical bloggers, it was double the icing on the cake! The Langham-Huntington hotel in Pasadena looked like something straight out of a movie (I guess that would make sense given where it’s located).

Before the big day on Monday, I had the pleasure of having dinner with a few of the other invitees including: Dr. Val Jones, Matthew Holt, PalMD, Dr. Jan Gurley and Doctor Pundit – all of whom are actively involved in making changes in healthcare. I was proud to represent the public health interest at the table!

The day of the brainstorm, things got kicked off with opening remarks from Michelle Levander, Director of the California Endowment and an introduction of the very well informed Lisa Stone, cofounder of the hugely successful BlogHer network and our moderator for the day. The discussion was filled with great ideas and commentary on best practices in the health blogosophere, mainly to inform USC’s communication school on how to develop a new media focused program for current and future health journalists. There is no getting around it – the way we receive news, what constitutes as news and reporting methods have all changed over the past few years. The 2.0 world isn’t just about having news republished and formatted online, but it’s about making content relevant for the people who are being informed.

Many of the participants at the event were from physician/medical backgrounds who were involved in blogging and other forms of social media. I’m happy to say that a few of us public health folks were represented, including Jody Ranck, Nedra Weinreich, Erin Edgerton (of CDC/White House new media team), and Jeni Miller of the Partnership for the Public’s Health. This discussion really showed the different issues that medical bloggers have to deal with versus those in public health trying to impact change for the masses. I also enjoyed that nursing was represented with Kim from Emergiblog.  All very important roles.

Throughout the day we discussed the importance of persuasive writing in health journalism and how storytelling creates genuine impact. Other topics included information accuracy/fact checking, transparency, translating medical information into layman’s terms and creating a system of standards to reduce sensationalism. I would have to say that one of the main highlights for me was meeting the distinguished Dr. Tony Iton, former Director of the Alameda County Health Department and now Senior Vice President of Healthy Communities for The California Endowment’s California Living 2.0 Initiative. Not only does he have 3 degrees in medicine, public health and law – he was very personable and down to earth. I’m now most definitely a fan.

He spoke about issues that are most definitely priorities for public health: health inequalities/disparities. He made me realize again why I got involved in public health rather than going to medical school. His focus was on the correlation of poverty and life expectancy in certain areas around the country. I never realized the amount of data that a death certificate gave until Dr. Iton pointed it out – cause of death, age, race and where they lived. Based on these points, he laid down fantastic insight on the elusive phenomenon of length of life being tied up in poverty, barriers to opportunity (good housing, education, etc.) and the location of where people live. I would encourage you to check out the well produced video series Unnatural Causes as well as reading the book Life and Death from Unnatural Causes (PDF).

The day ended for me with great opportunities to continue making connections with these amazing folks and expanding my network of great Health 2.0 proponents. I’m definitely looking forward to what comes out of this brainstorm and to continue being in touch with the California Endowment people to move health journalism forward into the new media realm.

Hey folks, another great opportunity to learn about how social media can be put to use in developing your next social marketing strategy! And for those of you who aren’t in the public health or social marketing spaces, make sure to understand what kind of social marketing we are talking about here.

My colleague, mentor and friend – Nedra Weinreich of Weinreich Communications is once again imparting her extensive knowledge on the social media landscape for the important work that we do. Most recently, she gave us lessons on how to make social marketing more effective. In the coming months of October and November, Nedra provides another opportunity to sharpen your marketing skills with the Social Media for Social Marketers Series.

From the site:

Why attend Social Marketing University Online?

• You will receive an intensive training in the fundamentals of social media that you can start to apply to your program immediately.
• SMU Online is an opportunity to learn from Nedra Weinreich, a noted expert who has worked in the field for many years, and benefit from her experience.
• Attend from anywhere – at work, home or on the road, even from outside the United States.
• Participation in the webinars is easy! All you need is an internet connection (no software to download) and a phone line (toll-free from the US/Canada). You can even connect to the audio through your computer using Skype for free.
• You will have access to the webinar recording to review as many times as you like at your convenience.

Spread the word and sign up – you definitely will get your money’s worth.

Once again, Pulse + Signal will be participating in Blog Action Day and I’m pretty excited about it. “Going Green” and being environmentally savvy has become a huge phenomenon and that is exactly what this year’s theme is about: climate change.

So on October 15th, I will be writing about how the built environment affects our public health. I encourage you to also participate and get involved by checking out Blog Action Day’s website and signing up.

I’m so happy that Dr. Clark won the groundbreaking Flu PSA contest put on by the Dept. of Health and Human Services! When I first saw the entry, I had to watch it a couple times – not only was it entertaining but it was informative! Exactly what was needed, in my opinion.

Dr. Clark – if you come across this post, I would LOVE to get in touch and interview you!

On another note, I am seriously proud of how the HHS put this together. Over 200 video entries for the contest – that’s no small feat. Really looking forward to seeing how they move forward with using new media to engage the public on issues that are of high importance in the public health world. Also big kudos for the new site redesign on Flu.gov – crisp, clean and information is easily laid out for consumers to absorb.

You know I had to end on a good note…hit it Dr. Clark!

Continuing with my upload of great interviews with public health professionals from the recent CDC Health Communication, Marketing and Media conference – I had the opportunity to connect with Jason Melancon, Director of Media and Communications at the Louisiana Public Health Institute (LPHI). Jason has more than eight years of experience managing print and web based marketing campaigns, special events and public relations. He also has extensive experience managing large scale, regional and statewide public health social marketing campaigns.

I met Jason in a panel session on how the CDC was tracking the use of their social web tools. Afterward we connected for a chat on what he was doing at LPHI and how they were using new media to help with their campaigns. One campaign in particular that we spoke about (and covered in the video) was Stay Healthy LA (Louisiana). Another initiative that LPHI is moving forward is GNOcommunity.org, which helps individuals and families locate quality community healthcare centers near them.

Interview with Jason Melancon, Louisiana Public Health Institute from Andre Blackman on Vimeo.

Last month, I had the pleasure of attending CDC’s 2009 Health Communication, Marketing and Media conference in Atlanta, GA. I’ve never been so excited to go to an event that perfectly matches my interests in public health and communication/media – maybe with the exception of my first APHA conference.

This meeting of public health professionals who are passionate about communicating health messages to the masses recharged me 100 times over and the many thoughts I had during the panels are being articulated into a post that will surface later this week. Among the things I got to experience, I had the opportunity to meet some great people that I follow online and finally got to meet them in person.

One of those people is Susannah Fox who is the prominent voice of the Pew Internet Project, which many of you know contains a wealth of data and information on the trends taking place across the web. Susannah is heavily focused on health information and when she is not spreading great information on Twitter or conducting research, you can find her on the e-Patients site writing about the participatory medicine/empowered patients movement.

At the conference I asked Susannah a couple questions regarding her thoughts on new media advances in public health:

Interview with Susannah Fox, Pew Internet Project from Andre Blackman on Vimeo.

For the links to the resources that Susannah mentioned towards the end of the video regarding .com vs .org examples -

PatientsLikeMe: a vibrant community of patients sharing their experiences

Project HealthDesign: stimulating innovation in personal health information technology (creation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)

I’m a big supporter of diving in and learning as much as possible about a subject that grabs your interest. The same applies to jobs and fields of study – there are plenty of opportunities to learn great new things! The real value, however, is in the people that you get to work with/for – the experience to learn along side an industry leader is worth far beyond its weight in gold.

For that reason, it is my honor to present two internship opportunities for those interested in honing their social media skills with two great organizations – Shaping Youth and Envision Solutions.

About Shaping Youth:

Shaping Youth is using the power of media for positive change. They’re flipping media & marketing messages to children in a healthier direction in three ways:

• Counter-marketing (currently productizing via film for global scalability/reach)
• Eliciting content accountability/change from industry producers themselves
• Raising media literacy/awareness via blog/podcast/internet film

Shaping Youth and its founder, the brilliant Amy Jussel, are looking for an (unpaid) intern to help with the organization’s social media activities. These include: social media outreach (bloggers, organizations, etc.), establishing and maintaining web presence (via Twitter, Facebook, WordPress) and making sense of online analytics.

About Envision Solutions, LLC:

Envision Solutions, LLC is a full-service healthcare marketing communications consulting firm.  Their mission is to make their clients more efficient and successful – they do this by providing quality consulting, training sessions and producing cutting edge research reports.

My good friend Fard Johnmar, founder of the company, is looking for an (unpaid) intern to help develop a health marketing social community. It’s exactly what it sounds like – using social media tools to create a community around health marketing. The other cool thing about this internship is that it involves Envision’s newest innovative project – Path of the Blue Eye. Right now in the health marketing/communications world, collaboration is going to be the key to moving effective solutions forward. The project focuses on making that happen.

So there you have it – a new month is upon us and that means a new wave of opportunity. If you or someone you know are interested in the Shaping Youth internship – please send me an email [mindofandre AT gmail dot com] or if you are interested in the Envision Solutions internship, contact Fard via Twitter. If you do not use Twitter, also please feel free to send me an email and I will relay.

Kevin Kruse of Kru Research has unveiled a new video highlighting the e-patient movement with details from various sources such as information from Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet Project. It’s also a promotion for the e-Patients Connections 2009, a conference to be held in Philadelphia this October

Read more about the e-patients movement with this great whitepaper.