Social Networks and Public Health: What we learned from the H1N1 Outbreak
Beginning in the spring of 2009, the H1N1 or “swine flu” virus rapidly spread across North America. Thousands contracted the flu and died, leaving the public at a loss for information and looking to public health professionals around the country for advice. President Obama had to declare a national public health emergency, and health professionals around the country were working to get out ahead of the disease in any way possible to avoid more death and suffering.
What public health professionals wish they knew as the H1N1 crisis was first beginning to arise in the United States were more unique ways to get insights into the spread of the pandemic: if pandemics are really so dangerous, shouldn’t the best minds in every field be striving for ways to help predict the likelihood of the disease spreading? Or the path by which the disease will spread? Or target areas which will likely be impacted the most?
It turns out that social network researchers were doing just that. In the study of social network theory (SNT), researchers were interested in applying this theoretical basis for human interaction to the spread of diseases. There, they were finding exciting and life-saving evidence of the connection between the ways diseases spread and the way social networks are arranged.
While it is crucial to understand how a disease spreads through a network, it is also crucial to understand how information is communicated through the network. This research brief from the North Carolina Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Center (NCPERRC) was released in February of 2011: almost exactly two years after the deadly pandemic began in the United States. The brief highlights data taken from North Carolina public health professionals about how they first learned about the H1N1 outbreak. By utilizing this data and comparing the information pathways for the H1N1 outbreak to the information pathways for common public health events, researchers at NCPERRC could create networks of the information sources for public health professionals in North Carolina (these graphs are found on the third page of the PDF linked above).
Although it may seem like making these graphs may be small-scale feat, the applications are incredibly meaningful. This network allowed NCPERRC to analyze its own paths of communication between professionals. According to their data, in general, most public health professionals received their information about general public health events from other public health staff with almost none of the sample receiving their information from the media. But, when it came to the unique case of the H1N1 virus, a much more significant portion of the public health professionals stated that their first information about H1N1 was from a media source. These subtle differences in information sources can have a massive impact on the resulting action (or inaction) from public health professionals and organizations as a whole. Communication researchers, for example, could aid organizations like NCPERRC to better promote their staff’s communication techniques, leading to a more effective spread of important health event information between professionals and to constituents who need accurate, quick information.
As seen above, this research directly connects to our course’s lectures on social networks. When professionals do not have easy communication pathways through social networks, it is much harder to get accurate information to the public in times of emergency. Risk communication is a crucial job of our government and our health institutions, and we need researchers in all disciplines, including in the field of SNT, to engage with health institutions and support the health and safety of all people. Using SNT to analyze these networks is the first step toward a future of even more interdisciplinary work to prevent the spread of disease, promote the spread of quick and accurate information, and, ultimately, save lives.
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https://sph.unc.edu/files/2015/07/nciph-perrc-soc-netw-analysis.pdf
“Addressing Public Health Issues with Social Network Analysis”
North Carolina Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health