Inaugural World Evidence Based Healthcare Day to be held on 20 October 2020
The Association for Healthcare Social Media (AHSM) is a professional society devoted to the use of social media by healthcare professionals. The multispecialty and multidisciplinary AHSM assists health professionals in utilizing social media platforms to serve as disseminators of accurate health information while doing so responsibly. AHSM members include many of the virtual physicians and nurses of TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube who are disseminating important healthcare-related information to their audiences.
Cochrane and six global leaders in evidence-based healthcare have recently launched the inaugural World Evidence Based Healthcare (EBHC) Day, to be held on 20 October 2020. It is an opportunity to create awareness of the need for better evidence to inform healthcare policy, practice and decision making in order to improve health outcomes globally.
Working closely with Cochrane, AHSM is sharing the World EBHC Day with its members and encouraging them to participate by asking them to share posts and videos on their platforms and tag Cochrane. Austin Chiang, MD, MPH, a founding member of the AHSM and the chief medical social media officer at Jefferson Health, in Philadelphia says “World EBHC Day provides an excellent platform for our members to explain exactly what evidence based healthcare is to their audiences, why it is important, and the impact that evidence based healthcare has made. We are excited to collaborate with Cochrane; our members know them as the ‘gold standard’ in consolidating health evidence through systematic reviews and this is an opportunity to explaining to our lay audiences why that is.”
Dr. Chiang adds, “With the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone is looking for health information online. With additional time spent on social media channels, there is also greater exposure to misinformation and misrepresentation of evidence online. Our members are health professionals that are provided with the tools and training to share health evidence on social media and actively work towards fighting misinformation on social media. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of educating our audiences about evidence based healthcare and the high quality evidence that Cochrane provides.”
