SaludToday: Curating Latino health information for a new generation

Abstract

Background: The Internet has quickly become a primary source and channel for distributing a multitude of health messages. To ensure health messages are effective and well-received, health communication researchers are constantly seeking new communication strategies to improve health literacy. One of the challenges associated with the widespread availability of online information is a saturated environment with many different messages. To build a trustworthy relationship with consumers, health communicators and other professionals must successfully filter the massive amounts of health information and create succinct and easily consumable health messages. Methods: Curation is an emerging strategy that uses a systematic and refined process to create such messages and prevent mixed messaging and information overload. Through this process information is collected, developed, stored, and shared. Results: The purpose of this article is to: (1) explain online content curation; (2) describe the e-health content curation model; (3) discuss the process of e-health content curation as it applies to a national Latino health campaign called SaludToday. This online content curation model consists of three primary steps: collect–craft–connect, which cohesively provide a systematic approach to identifying, collecting, generating, and disseminating health messages online. Conclusion: With massive amounts of content created across the Internet every minute, health content curation can play a vital role in bringing a particular audience to targeted, relevant and engaging content that has the potential to affect people's knowledge of health issues, attention to health issues, and capacity to make healthy changes.

Keywords:

• Content curation
• Digital curation
• E-health
• Health campaign
• Health communication
• Health promotion
• Internet
• Latino health

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) for Salud America! The RWJF Research Network to Prevent Obesity Among Latino Children, as well as the Cancer Therapy and Research Center (CTRC) Cancer Center Support Grant from the National Cancer Institute (P30 CA054174).

Disclaimer statements

Contributor There were no contributors, only authors.

Conflict of interest There are no conflicts of interest.

Ethics approval Ethics approval was not required as the paper does not discuss any information collected via human subjects research.

Additional information

Funding

This article and the activities described are funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through its national program, Salud America!

Notes on contributors

Amelie G. Ramirez

Author information

All authors are a part of the Salud America! project at the Institute for Health Promotion Research at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio under the leadership of Dr Amelie Ramirez. They represent communication and research specialists in the field of minority health.

Amelie G. Ramirez, DrPH, is an internationally recognized researcher and spokesperson on Latino cancer health disparities. She has more than 30 years experience directing research programs focusing on human and organizational communication to reduce chronic disease and cancer health disparities affecting Hispanics/Latinos and other populations. Ramirez is Chair ad Interim for the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Associate Director for Cancer Health Disparities Research at the Cancer Therapy Research Center (CTRC), and founding Director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR).

Shannon Baldwin

Shannon Baldwin, BA, is a former research area specialist for Salud America! and the Institute for Health Promotion Research at The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio. She received her bachelor's degree in political science and human communications from Trinity University in San Antonio. Shannon is a current J.D. candidate at South Texas College of Law class of 2018.

Rebecca T. Adeigbe

Rebecca Adeigbe, MS, is a project coordinator at the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio. At the IHPR, her research is focused on cancer prevention, health promotion and Latinos in higher education.

Rosalie P. Aguilar

Rosalie Aguilar, MS, is program coordinator for Salud America!, a national, on-line Latino childhood obesity prevention program funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and based at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA). Aguilar received her master's degree in health and kinesiology from The University of Texas at San Antonio and is currently pursuing her PhD in Translational Science from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Kipling Gallion

Kipling J. Gallion, MA, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine for the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the School of Medicine, at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, TX (UTHSCSA). Since 1982, Mr. Gallion has participated in a wide range of applied health communication activities in Texas and across the nation as a grant writer, media producer, trainer, evaluator, consultant, project director, and principal investigator. Since 2006, he has served as founding Deputy Director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research at UTHSCSA. He has published in a variety of books and journals and received state and national recognition for his work in health promotion research. He is an alumni of the University of California at Santa Cruz and Stanford University.

Cliff Despres

Cliff Despres, BJ, has more than a decade of experience in a wide variety of journalistic and scientific writing, editing and communication management. His experience ranges from covering city halls and school boards as a newspaper reporter to serving as a communications and public relations specialist for major health research universities. Currently at the Institute for Health Promotion Research (IHPR) at The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, Despres directs multimedia communications, including: strategic planning, budgeting, personnel hiring and evaluation, content development, managing interactions among IHPR researchers, mass media and the public; creating and managing a multiple-award-winning social media health campaign; serving as primary editor and writer for internal and external IHPR newsletters, websites, grants, videos, manuscripts, and blogs; and overall evaluation of content and channel monitoring and evaluation. The outcomes of his work have produced a multimedia online and social media communications campaign, national awards for the IHPR, novel content partnerships between the IHPR and national and local news outlets, and significantly helped the IHPR double its faculty/staff and generate more than $50 million in internal and external research funding since 2006.