This is a great first step. As consumers increasingly go online for health information, it's wonderful to see both the CDC and FDA endeavor to deliver information through social (as well as traditional) channels. Our company, Academic Network, a Stericycle Company, works with food and pharma clients and have been listening to social media for potential product and drug issues for years.

As an important next-step, though, we hope further direction from the FDA will be provide better guidelines for communicating to consumers online when their products are being discussed – so we can provide consumers accurate, timely information and have a transparent environment. While many companies monitor the social web, the hesitation to engage does not allow for open communication and early identification of product issues. We would like to discuss our work with you in creating the opportunity to deliver important facts about the things we consume for health – especially when questions are forced by product recalls.

Sincerely, Janet Johnson - Online Strategist
Academic Network

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There seem to be no working links for consumers to determine whether specific products on their shelves have any peanut butter contamination. I am extremely frustrated by the inability to find this data on the cdc.gov website. I am technically savvy and know how to find things everywhere else. Very sad state of affairs. Very frustrating!

http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/peanutbutterrecall/index.cfm
The above link is broken and I do not want to install a widget on my computer in order to get the info. Can't there just be a simple list where I can do a CTRL F and see if the product in question has been recalled?

Kimberly

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First of all, thank you for reading and being engaged in Health Marketing Musings. I am so sorry you were not able to find the resources you needed. The link to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration "Peanut Butter and other Peanut Containing Products Recall List" at http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/peanutbutterrecall/index.cfm appears to be working. Because FDA is the government agency responsible for ensuring that foods are "safe, wholesome and sanitary" (http://www.fda.gov/comments/regs.html), their database (linked above) will provide the most accurate and up-to-date recall information. The database is searchable by brand name, UPC, product description, or any combination of these.

As HHS, CDC, and FDA collaborate to bring credible health information to the public, we have worked to make Salmonella and recall information accessible in a variety of ways (including the widget you mentioned and other social media tools). You can also visit http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/typhimurium/ for information about the Salmonella outbreak and links to additional resources (such as the FDA database). Consumers may also contact CDC-INFO, the CDC contact center (800-CDC-INFO (800-232-4636) TTY: (888) 232-6348, 24 Hours/Every Day or cdcinfo@cdc.gov), to connect with a Customer Service Representative who can answer questions about Salmonella and even help you identify which products have been recalled.

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In looking at the information, one thing I am noting are marketing elements targeting the populace as a whole. It is in effect from public health OUT, kind of like a shotgun. I once was involved in a targeted marketing effort toward a specific sub-segment of the provider community that had to report HIV disease.

Disease reporting is a problematic effort as there is nothing perceived to be in it for the provider except “valuable” work/time. Our marketing effort then was oriented toward getting physicians/facilities to report by correlating formula based funding with their patients, noting how much each case report was worth in services. This is a gross oversimplification of the strategy, but that was one of the core messages. It was highly successful. It was presented at a national surveillance conference in 1998 and some items out of it became standard approaches across the country for HIV Reporting.

Very often, public health NEEDS sub-segments of the provider networks to do certain things. Another example might be trying to get private providers to participate in an immunization registry. We are having success in Kansas around this presently as that program is consciously using marketing approaches. We are using web hit/download data as one of the quantifiable measurable indicators of success along with core program data.

So, don't forget other ways public health can utilize the concepts other than communicating with the populace as a whole.

Karl V. Milhon, Director
Policy and Planning
Bureau of Disease Control and Prevention
Kansas Department of Health and Environment
http://www.kdheks.gov/bdcp/index.html

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Thank you for sharing you thoughts and suggestions. We appreciate hearing how others are using health marketing and hope this blog can be a forum for some of those discussions. I agree that providers and public health professionals are important audiences and should not be forgotten. The social media activities conducted for the peanut butter and peanut-containing product recalls targeted both consumers and partners, and the activities were conducted in coordination with other traditional media efforts in collaboration with the FDA and HHS. Several of the activities we did in the collaboration targeted specific audiences, including moms, food writers, and providers. We utilized specific social media channels to reach target audiences based on demographic research for the specific channel, please see our eHealth Data Briefs for more information.

CDC has used new media to reach providers in several campaigns; in fact one of our most popular eCards targets medical professionals to get flu vaccinations. Currently, CDC is exploring other innovative ways to reach providers by partnering with QuantiaMD, Mayo Clinic, Sermo and others.

Please share the results of your immunization registry program and other interesting projects that utilize health marketing. One of our goals is to share best practices, lessons learned and innovative health marketing solutions. In the next couple of weeks, we will release a more formal case study of using social media tools for the peanut butter and peanut-containing product recalls which will include some fairly impressive metrics. We look forward to hearing more suggestions and discussions about innovative and effective ways health marketing can be used in public health.

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