Health promotion in the era of social media and digital communication

Lorien C. Abroms: George Washington University, USA

Dr Lorien C. Abroms is a behavioral scientist and professor in the Department of Prevention and Community Health at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. She also serves as the co-director of GW’s Bright Institute and Public Health & Governance Cluster Lead at GW’s Institute for Data Democracy and Politics. Dr Abroms' career focuses on the intersection of digital communication technologies and health promotion. She has developed and evaluated mobile apps and text messaging programs for smoking cessation, including for special populations such as pregnant women and persons living with HIV, and in several countries such as Vietnam, India and Israel. Her programs have been widely disseminated with Text2Quit offered through US quitlines and SmokefreeMom offered through the US National Cancer Institute’s Smokefree.gov. Her recent research is focused on health promotion on social media, as well as promoting vaccine uptake and countering vaccine misinformation on social media. 

William Douglas Evans: George Washington University, USA                                                                                                                                         
Dr W. Douglas Evans is professor of Prevention and Community Health & Global Health in the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University. He directs the GW's Bright Institute and has received multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health and Foundation for design and evaluation of digital health interventions. Specifically, Dr Evans’ work focuses on translating marketing strategies, including health branding and digital technologies, into intervention strategies to promote adoption of health behaviors and avoidance of health risk behaviors, both in the United States and worldwide. He is currently principal investigator of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant entitled 'Digital Media for Cancer Control: Randomized Controlled Trial and Dose-Response Effects' that examines digital media exposure and dosage measurement techniques in a series of experimental studies to evaluate the effects of anti-vaping and anti-smoking digital messages on young adult tobacco use behavior.

Zhe He: Florida State University, USA                                                                                                                                                                                             
Dr Zhe He is an associate professor at School of Information, Florida State University. He serves as the Informatics Lead of UF-FSU Clinical and Translational Science Award. His research interests include clinical research informatics, consumer health informatics, knowledge representation, and big data analytics. The overarching goal of his research is to improve population health and advance biomedical research through the collection, analysis, and application of electronic health data from heterogeneous sources. As principal investigator, Dr He has been funded by the National Library of Medicine, the National Institute on Aging, Eli Lilly, Amazon, and NVIDIA.