Summary
Imagine: Educators own a media outlet – to fix training gaps & unite to fight the hype.
What if we owned the infrastructure to enable ANY learner, class, school, or profession to compete to have the most positive impact on health consumer awareness & demand?
Former pilots showed how ‘collective’ civic-engaged scholarship COULD enable us to promote health: (1) Online interns led their own media outlet that informed & activated the public, (2) Course-led projects piloted a health fitness communication campaign.
Calling future academic partners
It may be easier than you think to create the first online Speak Up Internship to curate its own new media outlet from which to pilot the first Speak Up for Sleep Challenge. Let’s enable ANY educator to LEAD & have the most impact:
Leverage an internship-led social media challenge to
Engage learners to interprofessionally compete to
Activate sleep consumer awareness about what works &
Disseminate EXACTLY where to find it.
Do No Harm?
Roughly 75% of healthcare is self-care. However, in 2020, Stanford’s Halsted Holman MD decried the massive failures and training gaps of our time.
The Failure: Health providers need to INFORM health consumers about what works & ACTIVATE them to find it. “The profession has not done so.“
The Training Gap: Leading health profession educators agreed to provide interprofessional hands-on training to use social media to promote evidence-based practices (>2o years ago) … Most don’t.
Case in Point: One in 3 adults have sleep problems. Few know: (1) CBT-I is the gold standard for insomnia, (2) FREE digital CBT-I is a good first step, (3) Pills are unsafe for those who most often take them, not to mention their side effects.
Yet, by the time people see me, they have Insomnia AND Substance Use AND Anxiety AND Depression AND ‘learned helpless’ beliefs that keep people stuck. Usually, they have …
- Been persuaded by commercial hype and misinformation
- Spent years and too much money on misguided solutions
- Gotten hooked on pills they didn’t need to start & that no longer work
- Been convinced: They can’t sleep without a sleep aid and they tried ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’ works.
We could stop the madness, unite to fight, and fix failures:
– FAILURE to fight the hype
– FAILURE to fight mis- or disinformation
– FAILURE to train interprofessionally as 1 community
– FAILURE to train together to use social media to promote health
– FAILURE to train together to inform & activate people to find what works.
Let’s Fix the Training Gap
As a former Georgetown Sleep Clinic member & Uniformed Services U Medical Psychology Course Director & Practicum Coordinator, I believe that our GMU pilots showed how the academic community could close this gap with online collective civic-engaged education & research for health promotion.
Pilot – Intern-Led Media Outlet
Pilot Questions: Can an unpaid, online-based undergraduate internship develop & manage a no-code network – to inform & engage the public on democracy?
Could interns create a challenge for peers to compete to raise awareness and have the most impact (i.e., Speak Up GMU)?
The Internship
George Mason University programs offer undergraduate internships – for 3 and 6 credits. Over 50 interns (2018 – 2023) from diverse programs (e.g., Sociology, Politics, Geographic Science) took a risk on a new, unpaid, totally online internship.
Interns led the People’s Platform for Democracy (the non-profit, non-partisan US onAir Network) to inform & engage their community. With no tech background and collaborating virtually, each cohort of US onAir interns learned just enough about Zoom, YouTube, Google, Canva, & WordPress to:
- Curate profiles (e.g., US Representatives, US Senators)
- Curate posts: (e.g., ’22 US House races, Democracy)
- Schedule & produce 1 on 1 interviews (e.g., in-person, online)
- Create brief ‘explainer’ videos (e.g., candidates, About Virginia onAir)
- Plan, schedule, produce, & and host livestream discussions, aka onAircasts (e.g., with government representatives; with subject matter experts on issues of interest)
- Direct one of the 50 State Hubs in the network (e.g., Virginia, Georgia, Michigan)
- Develop social media channels (i.e., VA onAir, US onAir)
- Establish a School Chapter
- Promote & run in-person events (e.g. Posts, Livestream Videos)
- Promote the internship to other schools (e.g., recruitment video).
- Prototype a video-based ‘Speak Up’ Challenge
Paul and Joe designed a ‘Speak Up’ Challenge for students to compete to address their representative about what mattered to them. They created: 1) a ‘Speak Up’ post (with Google Docs for registration & a database), (2) a promotional poster, (3) a YouTube playlist of 10 model entry videos.
Intern Feedback: Most expressed these positives …
– Learning skills (digital media, communication, leadership)
– Being more visible in their field of interest (e.g., online profile)
– Meeting local and national leaders
– Planning new hubs in the network (e.g., ‘India’ onAir).
Pilot – Course-Led Challenge
Pilot Question: Can service-learners collaborate – across courses and semesters – to collectively design & pilot ONE health fitness communication campaign?
GMU Distinguished Professor Gary Kreps led the communication campaign pilot to target ‘Freshman 15’ weight gain. Guided by success factors of the VERB campaign, the goal was to make the challenge ‘easy, fun, & popular’ to join. Spanning 3 semesters (2010 – 2011), 3 professors teaching 4 classes, offered learners the option to run a series of pilots for-credit.
COMM 820: One student reviewed the literature on campus fitness competitions.
COMM 391 A few students surveyed 100 Freshmen to identify how to make it ‘easy, fun, and popular’ to join.
COMM 404: Using survey data, four students designed the challenge using: a cash prize, credit-based participation, and an App (Wizit) with QR codes to verify laps between the campus and Starbucks.
COMM 200: Half the class competed with the other half.
COMM 200 Feedback
- Earning credit made it easy to collectively pilot & compete
- Competing for ‘bragging rights’ made it fun (no need for cash prize)
- They believed that they could make it popular – leveraging social media to develop an annual intercollegiate fitness competition – March Madness for Total Fitness.
- Faculty Feedback
- It was easy to add this for-credit service-learning project to their course.
- It could enable a line of community-engaged research.
Civic-Engaged Scholarship
Service-learning projects resulted in the following …
– At the 2010 mHealth Summit we presented this poster
– At the 2011 Teaching Prevention APTR conference, we presented at a symposium – Leveraging Technology to Impact Health in the Community.
– In 2011, I contributed a chapter in Technology Innovations for Behavioral Education.
– At the 2012 GMU Resilience Conference, retired Lt. Col. Mark Bates, PhD and I presented the pilots as a way to bring the DoD’s ‘Total Fitness’ culture to campus
– In 2012, Dr. Kreps and I submitted a grant application.
Proposed Next Step
Digital behavioral health researchers say: (1) People are 3 times more likely to use digital tools when they’re prescribed, and (2) Interdisciplinary training is needed to promote or prescribe the best digital tools.
Our pilots have shown that civic-engaged interns & course projects COULD unite us on their curated media outlet – to LEAD ‘collective’ health promotion.
– Online INTERNS curated a no-code ‘People’s Platform for Democracy’ – a digitally cloned network of 50 State websites – to inform and activate the public.
– COURSES with civic-engaged projects collectively piloted a health fitness campaign.
Next Pilot: An online Speak Up Internship will build a curated media outlet on which to LEAD peers to promote a digital tool in its first social media challenge – Speak Up for Sleep.
Experts say digital CBT-I self help is a good first step. The online Path to Better Sleep (PTBS) is VHA-developed, it has had some evaluation, and is free. The 4 online modules include:
- A sleep screen
- Healthy sleep tips
- CBT-I self-help
- Sleep apnea tips.
The First Speak Up Internship
Pilot Question: Can a new online ‘Speak Up’ Internship (1) build the ‘no-code’ platform, & (2) design, create, and pilot the ‘Speak Up for Sleep’ social media challenge in which service-learners anywhere compete to promote the Path to Better Sleep to have the most impact?
Many educators integrate online training – for credit. These QI hands-on projects have saved millions of lives.
For this pilot, educators would offer – interprofessional practice in ‘collective online’ health promotion – for credit. Learners would compete to have the most impact – individually & for their teams (class, school, profession).
To earn a certificate of completion, learners acquire skills to promote Path to Better Sleep:
- Post on social media
- Engage other team members (class, school, profession) to share their post
- Use defined metrics to measure their impact.
Interns would build the no-code platform to support & lead the Speak Up Challenge
- Inform learners about insomnia, CBT-I, apnea, Path to Better Sleep, and social media best practices
- Activate learners to promote Path to Better Sleep in the competition they develop, promote & lead
- Spotlight the posts of top health promoters (learner, course & professor, school, profession)
- Promote the internship to recruit the next cohort
- Study and present new best practices for ‘collective’ health promotion.
Call to Action
Future interns could digitally clone the first ‘Speak Up’ – for ANY issue – to create & curate an interconnected People’s Network for Health Promotion – an academic-owned, civic non-profit enterprise to improve:
Teaching: Enable social media practice to ‘collectively promote & prescribe‘ what works
Research: Test/Identify/Disseminate real-world best ‘collective social media‘ practices
Service: Boost health consumer awareness & demand for what works.
The People’s Network would enable ANY educator to assign civic-engaged learners
to collectively leverage social media
to continuously compete
to … Inform & Activate … Patients & Populations
to find what works for:
- PREVENTION (vaccines, fluoride)
- CHRONIC ILLNESS (obesity, pain)
- HEALTH & WELL-BEING (stress management)
- ADVOCACY (gun safety, reproductive care).
THE BOTTOM LINE: Just like communities of birds fight together … We are calling partners to pilot a NEW vision – to make it easy, fun, & popular for the academic community to unite to:
- Fight the coming AI-infinite mis- & disinformation and increase consumer awareness & demand for what works & where to find it
- Use collective online civic-engaged scholarship to deploy social media competitions to have the highest impact – on the People’s Network for Health Promotion – we own.
Educators needed: (1) Co-lead the Speak Up Internship, and/or (2) Assign learners to earn a certificate of completion for participating in the Speak Up Challenge.
Experience: Path to Better Sleep, civic-engaged education & scholarship, public health, sleep, behavioral medicine, communication, social media, technology, civic entrepreneurship, social marketing. This platform can be ‘cloned’ for any ‘Speak Up’ issue. See Faculty Slides.
Meredith Cary, PsyD has over 20 years educating (Medical Psychology, Sleep Medicine, & Psychiatry) & over 35 years practicing clinical health psychology. Disclosure: Donations to 501c3, the onAir Network – a no-code’People’s Network to inform and engage the public on important issues.
Contact: drcary@mac.com