Finding Answers to Health Care Disparities: A Month of Tweets

Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, supports and evaluates strategies to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in health care across the U.S. Their 33 grantees explore on-the-ground solutions in settings from coast to coast.

  1. Finding Answers is a valuable resource for clinicians, health care administrators, researchers, and policymakers working toward health equity.  The Finding Answers team has created tools such as The Roadmap to Reducing Disparities...
  2. ...and the FAIR Database, a searchable compendium of nearly 400 journal article summaries of the published health disparities literature. Visitors can search the database by disease, race/ethnicity, intervention strategy and more.
  3. But Finding Answers didn't want their work to be a one-way conversation. So, in January 2013, they launched "A Month of Tweets" to amplify the national discussion on finding solutions to health care disparities.  They started the month with a newly created Twitter presence and a string of varied topics to get the conversation flowing:

  4. Four weeks later, after using all their social networks to spread the word, Finding Answers had made nearly 300 friends on Twitter, including health policy advocates, health equity researchers, journalists, medical professionals, health equity organizations, and private citizens passionate about equitable health care for all Americans.  @FndgAnswers's Followers are people and organizations who can really use the information FA provides, and at the same time spread that information to a broad and relevant audience.  They are people and organizations such as:

  5. Finding Answers started generating good conversations with a diverse array of interested organizations:
  6. Now that people were listening, Finding Answers encouraged more interaction by asking a timely question:
  7. Does your healthcare organization have a New Year's #resolution to reduce #disparities? Tweet your resolution with hashtag: #Equity13!
  8. The result gave us all a glimpse of the good work being done nationwide to make health care equally accessible and effective for all Americans:
  9. @RWJF_HumanCap UHIP provides health education and screenings at local churches w/aim of reducing the disparity of health outcomes #Equity13
  10. The UCCCC is helping graduate students from Chicago State Univ address #cancer #disparities in the Southside community. bit.ly/XrvZKL
  11. This year we will continue to target our BP control efforts to our African American patients. Control rate of 75% is within reach. #Equity13

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The mission of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is to improve the health and health care of all Americans.

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