This year at the eighth annual Unite for Sight Global Health and Innovation Conference, more than 2,200 people from 55 countries came together at Yale University on April 22 to present world-changing ideas and promote the use of social media.
The event, held in New Haven, Conn., was the world's leading global health and social entrepreneurship conference. The conference convened a wide variety of participants who exchanged ideas across all disciplines of global health, international development and social entrepreneurship.
Many notable speakers gave speeches on the progress of their global projects, while other participants gave new social enterprise pitches. These pitches ranged from bringing hemodialysis therapy to low resource areas to strategies that prevent maternal mortality in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Although several different topics were presented at the conference, every speaker stressed the importance of using social media as a tool to spread ideas, efforts and knowledge.
Jeremy Levine, producer and editor of the film “Good Fortune,” commented on the importance of using social media for creating health awareness.
“Many public health leaders should use social media — TV, movies, reality shows, music, talk shows, Twitter, Facebook — to communicate information and create mindsets that empower people to make informed choices for themselves, their children and their communities,” Levine said.
Levine's work has been screened in dozens of film festivals around the world, broadcast nationally in six countries and recognized with several awards for production and human rights.
Another supporter of social media at the conference was Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group. Cook advocated “igniting change through social media.” He uses photography and blogging to emphasize how certain toxins like mercury can affect a person’s health and the environment.
“The research of our company brings to light unsettling facts that you have a right to know, but instead of using boring statistics, I think it is more impactful if I use a picture to tell a story,” Cook said.
Dr. Neal Baer, director of photographic empowerment at University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism and executive producer of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,” agreed with Cook on the importance of social media.
As a previous writer for the medical drama show “ER” and current writer for “Law and Order,” he uses his medical knowledge and creativity in order to create stories that engage the audience while educating them. He has covered a multitude of issues including rape as a weapon of war in the Congo, child soldiers, child obesity, HIV deniers, vaccine debates and more.
Through collaboration with Hollywood Health & Society — a program of the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center that promotes factual health information in TV shows — and popular television shows like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” Baer raises awareness for public health issues by consulting with doctors to ensure the material he presents is factual.
Baer’s approach to education does not stop at television. In addition to TV, he uses a wide array of other social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote health awareness. With almost 12,000 followers and 3,000 tweets he is able to reach a wide audience on a daily basis.
Additionally, he works closely with major public educators such as Nicholas Kristof in an effort to reach a wider audience. He ended his lecture at the conference, titled: Doctors as Storytellers: Using our Stories for Social Change, by challenging the audience to use social media in a way to impact the world around them.
“Everyone has a different perspective and a different approach to understanding some of the world’s largest pandemics and issues. Using social media is one of the ways we can truly have an impact on one another,” Baer said.
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