Seasonal Flu 2008 - 2009

eHealth Activities for Seasonal Flu Vaccination 2008 – 2009 Flu Season

Blogs: On December 2, 2008, CDC conducted two webinars to educate and empower bloggers to spread the word, not the flu. CDC health communication specialists and seasonal flu subject matter experts met online with parent bloggers, to discuss basic information on seasonal flu and share research on key messages that have been proven to motivate people to get vaccinated. Subject matter experts also met online with healthcare provider bloggers to share valuable messages on encouraging vaccination among fellow healthcare providers, recent changes in immunization recommendations, and interactive media tools for bloggers.

Seven parent and five healthcare provider bloggers participated in the webinars; subsequently, some of these bloggers posted entries about influenza vaccinations generating more than 60 comments from readers.

Learn more about blogs at CDC

Health-e-Cards: CDC.gov users can share the facts about seasonal flu and encourage their friends, family, co-workers, and public health partners to get vaccinated by sending a seasonal flu Health-e-Card! Both English and Spanish versions of the CDC Flu Health-e-Cards are available at http://www.cdc.gov/ecards/.

Nine different seasonal flu eCards were available on CDC.gov, with seven cards that targeted specific audiences. The eCard for health professionals was the most popular with over 2,000 cards sent and more than 26,000 cards viewed. In total, the eCards were sent almost 6,000 times and viewed more than 45,000. The difference between sent and viewed cards likely demonstrates the viral nature of eCards and represents the eCards sent to large mailing lists, such as hospitals and national associations.

Learn more about CDC Health-e-Cards

Online Collaborations

CDC partnered with One Economy Corporation to provide critical seasonal flu vaccination messages on the One Economy Web site, The Beehive. One Economy Corporation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to using technology to increase communication and help address the needs of low-income audiences. The "Get Vaccinated" link on beehive.org features the CDC Flu Update Widget, a link to the CDC flu page, and a link to CDC Health-e-Cards.

On December 1, 2008, CDC launched a flu campaign to promote childhood flu vaccination to parents on WebMD with CDC "Get Vaccinated" graphical buttons and Flu Video ad promotion on targeted WebMD pages. During National Influenza Vaccination Week, a CDC-sponsored "Parenting Alert" promotion was launched, linking to a custom CDC flu page on WebMD, "Why Flu Matters: Personal Stories From Families Affected by Flu." This page featured a CDC Flu Video along with information on the importance of flu vaccination, a link to CDC Flu-e-Cards, and "Get Vaccinated" graphical buttons. The "Parenting Alert" resulted in more than 5.3 million impressions, or opportunities for WebMD users to see the promotion, while the custom CDC flu page received 6,732 page views and 6,109 visitors. Of the visitors to the CDC flu page on WebMD, 4,084 launched the flu video with nearly 100 clicking through to links to the CDC flu Web site and CDC flu Health-e-Cards. CDC also partnered with HealthCentral to provide targeted seasonal flu vaccination messages to high-risk consumer audiences, including patients and caregivers seeking information. HealthCentral bloggers interviewed a CDC subject matter expert on the importance of seasonal flu vaccination for persons with diabetes and asthma. These interviews resulted in two blog posts and three related comments. CDC also teamed with QuantiaMD, an online physician community, to disseminate clinical information about seasonal flu vaccination, diagnosis, and treatment. A custom CDC flu page on QuantiaMD featured three audio slide presentations, the CDC Flu Activity Map, and the CDC Flu Update widget. The three presentations received about 1,500 views over an eight-week period. QuantiaMD physicians were able to rate and comment on the presentations, resulting in more than 140 comments and 425 votes endorsing the highest rating for the three presentations.

Graphical Buttons and Badges: CDC invited government agencies, state and local health departments, and public health partners, to add the "Get Vaccinated" graphical button to their Web sites, email signatures, and blogs. The "Get Vaccinated" button provides a call-to-action prevention message and links to CDC's seasonal flu Web site for more information. CDC also promoted the flu campaign buttons through several partner sites, including the National Public Health Information Coalition (NPHIC) and MayoClinic.com.

The "Get Vaccinated" button was also posted on CDC's Second Life space and other CDC-managed Web spaces. A seasonal flu "badge" was also developed for social network participants to add to their profile pages. For example, MySpace users were able to copy the badge from CDC's MySpace profile and place it on their own social network profile and share the "I Got My Flu Vaccine" message with their friends, families, and online network.

The badges and buttons resulted in a total of 116,849 click-throughs to CDC.gov and were placed on 165 different Web sites including 53 partner sites; 52 health departments; 34 bloggers; 20 CDC.gov sites; and 6 social networking profiles. NPHIC promotion resulted in 2,795 clicks to the CDC.gov Flu Web site from NPHIC and its members' Web sites, while the MayoClinic.com placement generated more than 2.3 million impressions and 1,400 click-throughs to the CDC.gov Flu Web site.

Learn more about buttons and badges

Widgets: CDC launched several new seasonal flu widgets, which enable users to post CDC content on personal homepages or syndicate content on other sites, such as blogs, health department sites, and other Web sites that wish to participate. Such content is automatically updated whenever the original CDC content changes. All CDC widgets, including the following seasonal flu widgets, are available at http://www.cdc.gov/widgets.

• Widget: RSS Reader: This widget reads content from CDC RSS feeds; updated CDC content, including seasonal flu content, is displayed in the CDC RSS widget automatically. This widget was viewed more than 86,000 times.
• Widget: Seasonal Flu Activity Map: Updated weekly, the CDC flu map widget displays a current map of reported flu cases throughout the United States. CDC's seasonal flu activity map, an important element of CDC's weekly flu report, has been upgraded to provide easier access and presentation of information. The map is now located in a prominent location on CDC's seasonal flu Web site, http://www.cdc.gov/flu. Users are able to scroll through each week of flu activity and easily view the national changes in flu activity at http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/usmap.htm. This widget received more than 123,000 views.
• Widget: Interactive Quiz (Launched in January 2009): This widget features an interactive CDC quiz titled "Is it a cold, or is it the flu?" This widget received more than 44,000 views.

Learn more about widgets as a social media tool

Mobile: In an effort to reach the growing number of people who use mobile phones to seek health information, the CDC flu information is available in a mobile-ready format at http://m.cdc.gov. This site provides mobile-ready content that is easy to access and navigate from a wireless device. Of the more than 16,000 page views to the mobile-ready site, more than 400 of these visitors viewed of the mobile-ready flu content.

Learn more about mobile

Content Syndication: In order to increase the reach of CDC.gov influenza information and provide partners with an automated way to display CDC.gov content, CDC piloted a content syndication project. Through this technology, partners are able to set up mirror Web pages to CDC.gov that display identical content (without the CDC.gov header, footer, navigation, and branding) that is automatically updated every time a change is made to the CDC.gov content. This means of enabling partners to share this automatically updated CDC.gov content increases the presence of timely CDC content on partner Web sites while minimizing the need for Web content maintenance for partners. Seven CDC flu pages were syndicated, resulting in 3,600 total page views.

Learn more about content syndication

Podcasts/Vodcasts: CDC.gov and iTunes users can watch or listen to a podcasts about seasonal influenza vaccination manufacturing and production and share with their friends: http://www.cdc.gov/podcasts. CDC had two seasonal flu podcast series this year, one for the public (Flu Stop with CDC) and one for health professionals (CDC Seasonal FluView Update). For the "Flu Stop with CDC" series, which includes 7 podcasts, the audio file was downloaded or played almost 500 times and the transcript was downloaded or viewed more than 400 times. The "CDC Seasonal FluView Update" series, which includes 5 podcasts, was downloaded or played more than 1,600 times and the transcript was downloaded or viewed almost 1,000 times.

Learn more about podcasts as a social media tool

Email Updates and Mobile Alerts: CDC.gov users may sign-up to receive email updates or alerts sent directly to their email inbox or mobile phone when CDC.gov's seasonal flu content is updated: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/updates.htm.

CDC.gov Home Page Feature: In collaboration with NCIRD, two feature articles were included on the CDC.gov Home page to inform visitors about the importance of getting vaccinated. Both CDC.gov Home page features were written for the consumer audience. The first article, "Flu Season is Here", provided basic information about the flu, who should get vaccinated, the symptoms and complications of flu, and how flu is spread. The article was viewed over 21,000 times and is available at http://www.cdc.gov/Features/Flu.

The second article, "It's Not Too Late to Vaccinate", which was posted during National Influenza Vaccination Week, provided information about the event and stressed the importance of influenza vaccinations. It was viewed more than 4,000 times. The article is available at http://www.cdc.gov/Features/FluPrevention/.

Virtual Worlds and eGames: For the third year, CDC partnered with Whyville, a popular virtual world for "tweens," children ages 8 – 11, to promote seasonal flu vaccinations, handwashing, and other flu prevention strategies. Whyville kids invited their grandparents to a special "in-world" party on December 4, 2008. Gamers of all generations were virtually vaccinated together and talked online with a CDC influenza expert. Find more information on Whyville at http://www.whyville.net.

Thousands of Whyvillians participated in this activity, with 33,375 visits to the vaccination station; 8,965 virtual vaccinations given; 385,070 acts of hand-washing helping to protect friends from getting infected; 1,749 participants in the Vaccination Celebration; 402 Whyvillians interacting with the CDC expert in real-time; and 6,333 self-reports of Whyvillians who also were vaccinated in 'real life.'

Learn more about virtual worlds