Summary

Training Gaps & Harms

Roughly 75% of healthcare is self-care.  However, Stanford’s Halsted Holman MD spotlighted massive training gaps & failures of our time.

Failure:  Typically, healthcare professionals do NOT adequately inform health consumers about ‘what works’ for self-care & activate them to find it.

Training Gap:  Healthcare educators do NOT generally provide interprofessonal hands-on training to use social media to promote evidence-based practices … agreed upon over 20 years ago.

Case in Point:  One in 3 adults have sleep problems.  Too few know: (1)  CBT-I is the gold standard for insomnia, (2) FREE  digital CBT-I is a good first step, (3) Pills have side effects & are unsafe for most taking them.

Yet, by the time people see me, they struggle with Insomnia AND Substances AND Anxiety AND Depression AND beliefs that keep them sick.  They have …

• Spent years & too much money on hyped solutions
• Gotten hooked on pills they didn’t need to start & that no longer work
• Learned-helpless beliefs: I can’t sleep without my pills … I tried everything & nothing works.

Let’s Fix the Training Gap

We could stop the madness, unite to fight, & fix the failures:

– FAILURE to fight the hype
– FAILURE to fight mis- or disinformation
– FAILURE to train interprofessionally as 1 community
– FAILURE to train together to use social media to promote health
– FAILURE to train together to inform & activate people to find what works.

As a former Georgetown Sleep Clinic member & Uniformed Services U Medical Psychology Course Director & Practicum Coordinator, I’m seeking partners to close this training gap – using our own media outlet to deploy online collective civic-engaged education & research for health promotion.

To begin, see how our 2 GMU pilots – one deploying interns, another deploying course projects – laid the foundation for the next pilot, Speak Up for Sleep.

Pilot – Intern-Led Media Outlet

Pilot Questions:  Can an unpaid, online-based undergraduate internship develop & manage a no-code network – to inform & engage the public on democracy?
Could interns create a challenge for peers to compete to raise awareness and have the most impact (i.e., Speak Up GMU)?

The Online Internship

George Mason University programs offer undergraduate internships – for 3 and 6 credits. Over 50 interns (2018 – 2023) from diverse programs (e.g., Sociology, Politics, Geographic Science) took a risk on a new, unpaid, totally online internship.

Interns led the People’s Platform for Democracy (the non-profit, non-partisan US onAir Network) to inform & engage their community.  With no tech background and collaborating virtually, each intern cohort learned to:

1.  Curate profiles (e.g., US Representatives, US Senators)
2.  Curate posts: (e.g.,  ’22 US House races, Democracy)
3.  Schedule & produce 1 on 1 interviews (e.g., in-person, online)
4.  Create brief ‘explainer’ videos (e.g., candidates, About Virginia onAir)
5.  Plan, schedule, produce, & and host livestream discussions, aka onAircasts (e.g., with government representatives; with subject matter experts on issues of interest)
6.  Direct one of the 50 State Hubs in the network (e.g., Virginia, Georgia, Michigan)
7.  Develop social media channels (i.e., VA onAir, US onAir)
8.  Establish a School Chapter
9.  Promote & run in-person events (e.g. Posts,  Livestream Videos)
10.  Promote the internship to other schools (e.g., recruitment video).
11.  Prototype a ‘Speak Up’ Challenge

Paul and Joe designed a ‘Speak Up’ Challenge for students to compete to address their representative about what mattered to them. They created:  1) a ‘Speak Up’ post (with Google Docs for registration & a database), (2) a promotional poster, (3) a YouTube playlist of 10 model entry videos.

Intern Feedback:  Most expressed positives:  (1) Learning digital media, communication, & leadership skills (2) Boosting career potential in their interest areas (3) Meeting local and national leaders.

Pilot – Course-Led Challenge

Pilot Question:  Can service-learners collaborate – across courses and semesters – to collectively design & pilot ONE health fitness communication campaign?

GMU Distinguished Professor Gary Kreps led the communication campaign pilot to target ‘Freshman 15’ weight gain. Guided by success factors of the VERB campaign, the goal was to make the challenge ‘easy, fun, & popular’ to join.  Spanning 3 semesters (2010 – 2011), 3 professors teaching 4 classes, offered learners the option to run a series of pilots for-credit.

COMM 820:  One student reviewed the literature on campus fitness competitions.
COMM 391  A few students surveyed 100 Freshmen to identify how to make it ‘easy, fun, and popular’ to join.
COMM 404:  Using survey data, four students designed the challenge using: a cash prize, credit-based participation, and an App (Wizit) with QR codes to verify laps between the campus and Starbucks.
COMM 200:  Half the class competed with the other half.

COMM 200 Feedback

• Adding the project to a course was easy for faculty and made it easy for learners to engage
• Competing for ‘bragging rights’ made it fun  (no need for cash prize)
• They believed that they could make it popular – leveraging social media to develop an annual intercollegiate fitness competition – March Madness for Total Fitness.
• The project enabled a line of community-engaged research.

Civic-Engaged Scholarship

Service-learning projects resulted in the following …

– At the 2010 mHealth Summit we presented this poster
– At the 2011  Teaching Prevention APTR  conference, we presented at a symposium – Leveraging Technology to Impact Health in the Community.
– In 2011, I contributed a chapter in Technology Innovations for Behavioral Education.
– At the 2012 GMU Resilience Conference, retired Lt. Col. Mark Bates, PhD and I presented the pilots as a way to bring the DoD’s ‘Total Fitness’ culture to campus
– In 2012, Dr. Kreps and I submitted a grant application.

The Next Step

In sum, our pilots have shown that civic-engaged interns & course projects COULD unite us on their curated media outlet – to LEAD ‘collective’ health promotion.

– Online INTERNS curated a no-code ‘People’s Platform for Democracy’ – a digitally cloned network of 50 State websites – to inform and activate the public (for 5 years).
– COURSES with civic-engaged projects collectively piloted a health fitness campaign.

Next Pilot:  An online Speak Up Internship will build a curated media outlet on which to LEAD peers to promote a digital tool in its first social media challenge – Speak Up for Sleep.

Digital behavioral health research indicates:  (1) People are 3 times more likely to use digital tools when they’re prescribed, (2) Interdisciplinary training is needed to promote or prescribe the best digital tools, and (3) digital CBT-I self help is a good first step.

The online Path to Better Sleep (PTBS) is VHA-developed, it has had some evaluation, and is free. The 4 online modules include:

• A sleep screen
• Healthy sleep tips
• CBT-I self-help
• Sleep apnea tips.

The First Speak Up Internship

Pilot Question:  Can a new online ‘Speak Up’ Internship (1) build the ‘no-code’ platform, & (2) design, create, and pilot the ‘Speak Up for Sleep’ social media challenge in which service-learners anywhere compete to promote the Path to Better Sleep to have the most impact?

Many courses include online training – for credit. These QI hands-on projects have saved millions of lives.

For this pilot, educators would offer – interprofessional practice in ‘collective online’ health promotion – for credit. Learners would compete to have the most impact – individually & for their teams (class, school, profession).

To earn a certificate of completion, learners promote Path to Better Sleep:

1. Post on social media
2. Engage other team members (class, school, profession) to share their post
3. Use defined metrics to measure their impact.

Interns would build the no-code platform to support & lead the Speak Up Challenge

1. Inform learners about insomnia, CBT-I, apnea, Path to Better Sleep, and social media best practices
2. Activate learners to promote Path to Better Sleep in the competition they develop, promote & lead
3. Spotlight the posts of top health promoters (learner, course & professor, school, profession)
4. Promote the internship to recruit the next cohort
5. Study and present new best practices for ‘collective’ health promotion.

Call to Action

Future interns could digitally clone the first ‘Speak Up’ – for ANY issue – to create & curate an interconnected People’s Network for Health Promotion – an academic community-owned, non-profit civic enterprise to improve:

Teaching:  Enable social media practice to ‘collectively promote & prescribe‘ what works
Research:  Test/Identify/Disseminate real-world best ‘collective social media‘ practices
Service:  Boost health consumer awareness & demand for what works.

The People’s Network would enable ANY educator to assign civic-engaged learners
to collectively leverage social media
to continuously compete for the most impact
to … Inform & Activate … Patients & Populations
to find what works for:

• PREVENTION   (vaccines, fluoride)
• CHRONIC ILLNESS   (obesity, pain)
• HEALTH & WELL-BEING   (stress management)
• ADVOCACY   (gun safety, reproductive care).

A NEW VISION:   Like communities of birds that fight together … Let’s leverage collective online civic-engaged scholarship to make it easy, fun, & popular to unite the academic community to:

• Fight the flood of infinite mis- & disinformation and increase consumer awareness & demand for what works & where to find it
• Use the People’s Network for Health Promotion – we own – to deploy social media competitions to have the highest impact.

Educators needed:   (1) Co-lead the Speak Up Internship, and/or (2) Assign learners to earn a certificate of completion for participating in the Speak Up Challenge.
Experience:  Path to Better Sleep, civic-engaged education & scholarship, public health, sleep, behavioral medicine, communication, social media, technology, civic entrepreneurship, social marketing.  This platform can be ‘cloned’ for any ‘Speak Up’ issue.  See Faculty Slides.

Meredith Cary, PsyD  has over 20 years educating (Medical Psychology, Sleep Medicine, & Psychiatry) & over 35 years practicing clinical health psychology. Disclosure: Donations to 501c3, the onAir Network – a no-code’People’s Network to inform and engage the public on important issues.
Contact:  drcary@mac.com