Communicating Health using Social Media

Social media has become a powerful medium for communication.

Here is an introduction to social media as a communication channel and some basic information about the channels that you can use as a health professional.

Key Tips

  • PICK YOUR PLATFORM - Use both planning as well as audience insights to pick the platforms that are right for you. If you are strapped for time, it is often better to pick one platform, like Facebook or Instragram and do it well, rather than spreading yourself too thinly across multiple social media spaces.

  • AUDIENCE USAGE - Understand how your audience uses different social media platforms and build your content around this understanding. For example, if your audience uses specific groups on Facebook to engage on a specific health topic, become a regular contributor to that group.

  • BUILD TRUST - Trust matters on social media, especially when it comes to health information. Check out our building trust page for more tips on this topic.

  • EVALUATE & IMPROVE - Create, test, evaluate and try again. Social media is a constantly evolving channel with many platforms. Use insights and feedback from your audience to constantly improve.

  • BENEFITS & COSTS - There are both benefits and costs to using social media and health professionals should make sure that they abide to relevant codes of conduct for their practice when using social media.


What is social media?

Social media (SM) is defined as any web-based communications channel dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content- sharing and collaboration.

There are a number of different types of social media including:

  • forums

  • microblogging

  • social networking

  • social bookmarking and curation


Communicating Health research focused on understanding the use of social media by young adults, however it should be noted that social media is widely used. Globally, social media use has grown to 2.8 billion users and continues to grow.


There are a myriad of sites and applications that are considered under social media. Check out the Conversation Prism for an overview of the hundreds of applications that fall under this broad term. Despite the large number of sites, social media usage is often dominated by a handful of sites and applications such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and more recently Tik Tok. These sites are often called platforms or publishers.

Using social media to communicate health


Social media has become an acceptable channel to communicate health and an integral part of social marketing for health.

Social media can:

  • Increase opportunity for interactions with your audience

  • Provide users with relevant and tailored information

  • Provide opportunities and a space for more available, shared, and tailored health information to manage specific health issues

  • Increase accessibility by widening access to health information

  • Provide valuable peer/social/emotional support as users communicate and share information about health issues. Encouragement, motivation, and shared experience are important social support aspects of social media platforms

  • Facilitate public health surveillance in real-time and at a relatively low cost (e.g. aggregate data on patient experiences, monitor public response to health issues, track and monitor disease outbreak, identify misinformation of health information, identify target areas for intervention efforts, and disseminate health information to target communities).

There are a number of potential benefits but also risks to using social media that health professionals should be aware of. Check out the corresponding benefits and costs presentation for further information.

The pages in this section give you further information and tips from our Communicating Health studies about using social media to communicate health information, as well as links to other sources of information that will help you improve your social media.

"“Build it, and they will come”
only works in the movies.
Social Media is a build it, nurture it, engage them, and they may come and stay."

- Seth Godin

Study Focus

Young adults use of different social media platforms for health information: insights from online conversations

This Communicating Health study focused on how young adults use social media for information about nutrition. It found that young people commonly use social media platforms for nutrition information, using different platforms in different ways.


For example:

  • Facebook was commonly used to just scroll through information and on the platform they commonly came across health related information by accident either through advertisements, their friends or specific health-related groups that they follow.

  • YouTube was used to do deliberate searches for information, with multiple sources used to compare information.

  • Instagram information was dominated completely by fitness and wellness personalities and young people used it to hear from the people they followed on this topic.



Social media use for nutrition outcomes in young adults: A mixed-methods systematic review

This Communicating Health study identified 21 research projects that aimed to use social media to improve nutrition in young adults. Nine of these were randomised controlled trials, but only one successfully changed nutrition behaviours.

The lack of impact in these trials was partially attributed to young adults not using or engaging with the intervention (they only completed between 3% and 69% of the interactions they were supposed to complete).

Qualitative analysis identified three main themes:

      • Information dissemination: Young adults reported that social media channels were a useful platform to learn about new recipes and healthy eating.

      • Social support: Social media can provide social support, inspiration and/or motivation to change or maintain healthy behaviours

      • Social undesirability: Young adults were reluctant to post certain information (particularly weight-related information) on their personal social media accounts.


An overview of the study is provided in this infographic and you can also read the full study.

Download the Social Media Content Template from the templates page to fill in and make it relevant for you.

Where to Next? - Building Trust or What Works (& Doesn't Work) on Social Media or to helpful resources linked below

Links & Resources


How To's & Tutorials



Professional Guidelines


  • Australian Medical Association – Guide to social media and medical professionalism: https://ama.com.au/article/social-media-and-medical-profession

  • American College of Physicians and the Federation of State Medical Boards policy statement & guidelines

    • Chauhan B, George R, Coffin J. Social media and you: what every physician needs to know. The Journal of Medical Practice Management : MPM. 2012 Nov-Dec;28(3):206-209. - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23373164/

    • Farnan JM, Snyder Sulmasy L, Worster BK, Chaudhry HJ, Rhyne JA, Arora VM; American College of Physicians Ethics, Professionalism and Human Rights Committee; American College of Physicians Council of Associates; Federation of State Medical Boards Special Committee on Ethics and Professionalism*. Online medical professionalism: patient and public relationships: policy statement from the American College of Physicians and the Federation of State Medical Boards. Ann Intern Med. 2013 Apr 16;158(8):620-7. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23579867/

  • The American Medical Association’s (AMA) Code of Medical Ethics



Publications