Using Instagram as a Health Education Tool

I decided that the first thing I'll write here will be about the two fields I spent a lifetime working on; health education and social media.

So here we go...

During my bachelor’s degree in health and patient education, we took a course about marketing tools and strategies and how we can apply them to our practice along with our theories and models. This course was my favorite with all the noteworthy information that goes beyond the medical field yet plays a significant part in it. My interest in this topic continued and grew significantly when the marketing medium changed from traditional to digital, including social media marketing using different social media platforms that are accessible by everyone.

This year with all we went through, most industries and especially the healthcare industry, realized the importance of social media in educating and delivering the right medical information to the public. However, some organizations are still not effectively utilizing them.

In Saudi Arabia, most of our healthcare organizations use twitter as a health education tool and Instagram as a marketing tool, which led to a lot of misinformation on Instagram, which is not always rooted in science, and some can be very harmful. Statistics showed that in August 2020, there were 14,565,000 Instagram users in Saudi Arabia, and up to 47% of them are between 25-44 years old. This vast number should not be neglected, and Instagram should be used more effectively as a health education tool, not only a marketing tool. An excellent example of effective Instagram use is the Saudi Ministry of Health account that reached more than 120,000 views per post.

So, the question now is how can we do this?!

Instagram is a visual platform, so we need to create high quality and credible content. Like other social media platforms, it is essential to have a specialized graphic designer who can attract the targeted audience, a qualified and experienced health education specialist who can rephrase information in a related and straightforward way, and finally having a dedicated person to follow up and monitor activities and engagement, and communicate with the audience. In addition to educating the public, Instagram can educate and train other healthcare professionals by using live videos and IGTV.

Why don’t we keep using Twitter alone for this purpose? From my experience, Instagram is more comfortable and faster to use by both organizations and the public as information and posts can be arranged better; Last but not least, data provided from Instagram are more accurate than other social media platforms.