“Social Media in Health and Medicine” at UBC followed from the sideline

As I have previously written about on this blog, the School of Population and Public Health at University of British Colombia is now offering a course on Social Media in Health and Medicine.
The course is led by Dean Giustini who shares his presentation materials online. Since I am unfortunately not in Canada and can’t participate in the class, it is great to be able to follow it from the side. The presentation from the third week of the course was recently posted and focuses on Consumer (& public) health in social media.
The main topic for the session is on the citizens/consumers information gathering behavior when they are sick or need health information and the importance of not only literacy skills, but also media and social media literacy skills. Although primarily aimed at giving a quick overview, the presentation has good examples of where consumers seek information, how literacy skills become essential and examples of the continuum of new places to get health information online.