Social Media

Changing how we connect

Whether your objective is marketing, public relations, or customer service, social media is the way to go these days. While the tech and business worlds have embraced this new way of communication, the medical field, especially those focused on end-of-life care, have been lagging behind.

Efforts like The GroundSwell Project are seeking to change this. In a recent blog post, founder and director Kerrie Noonan described how GroundSwell is using social media to promote what they call, "death literacy:"

It was with great interest that I attended the Palliative Care Australia stakeholders’ forum in Canberra recently where we talked about strategies that encourage increased community awareness about palliative care.

This includes amplifying community conversation and knowledge about death and dying. Social media was a big part of this discussion, and it was wonderful to see this on the agenda because whilst there is a lively international community of palliative care tweeple and social media communicators, on a national level we have yet to fully explore the potential of new media to share our stories.

I was invited to the forum as the director of a not-for-profit health promotion organisation, The GroundSwell Project. We use both traditional arts and digital media to promote resilience and community well-being at end-of-life and through bereavement. We collaborate with schools, palliative and aged care organisations to run our arts programs and to encourage awareness about what we call ‘death literacy’ in the community.

As a health-promotion organisation our work is underpinned by a public health and social approach to death, dying and bereavement, and social media is our preferred platform for communicating about our work.

We have embraced Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, Twitter and WordPress to share stories about our projects. For instance, news about our current high school drama project on organ donation is regularly posted on our main website and can also be followed via a dedicated project website. At the same time all the participants are actively involved in sharing via a closed Facebook group. Photos and videos are also integrated across our websites thanks to Flickr and YouTube. Everyone in the project, young and old, is involved in sharing online.

Education is always one of the highest priorities of palliative and hospice care programs, and what better way than through free mediums that allow messages to reach thousands of eyes instantly? Your social media efforts don't have to start out big, but a blog, Twitter account, and a few carefully selected YouTube video postings can draw attention to the many services offered and the often touching results.