Citizen Alert: Crowd Sourced Public Health Workers

Over the past several weeks, many of us have been exposed (no pun intended) to the news surrounding the H1N1 (swine) flu outbreak. From the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring a Level 5 pandemic to schools closing down, it was a pretty nerve wracking series of events. In the world of public health, alerting the public to disease outbreaks, food/product recalls and general prevention information, is absolutely vital. With regular information on where the disease was spreading and more importantly, how to prevent from getting it, organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) did a great job in protecting our health. But just think, wouldn't the health information be able to spread faster if they enlisted the help of you and me as well?

With the development of crowd sourcing tools such as The Extraordinaries, I firmly believe that the public can pitch in and become honorary public health workers! For example, with the H1N1 outbreak there were various information resources ranging from maps of the outbreak in the US to which schools were closing down, however I think the most important information that would be helpful in spreading around would be how to prevent getting the flu. The Acting Surgeon General put up a short video on Youtube explaining a few simple ways to do this. Using the Extraordinaries, what if you could help the video get as many eyes as possible by automatically uploading the video to your Facebook account, or a link in your Facebook status - even a prompt to post the link to Twitter. In just a minute or two, you would be able to inform your circle of friends about an important piece of information from a credible source. Done. In that time you volunteered your time to become a public health advocate.

The same could be done in the situation with food recalls. Remember the salmonella/peanut butter fiasco? There could be a time when something similar happens again to a food item and you as a concerned citizen would be able to volunteer a few minutes of your time, when next you are at the grocery, to identify if there are still any remaining tainted items. Using the photo capabilities of your phone, there might be a way to tie in GPS integration so that certain stores can be identified (alerting the store managers). With these actions you'd be able to help prevent someone in your community from purchasing a product that may have slipped through the cracks and consequently becoming sick.

The possibilities start looking promising when you factor in the genuine desire for people to do good and help others stay well - especially if it doesn't take alot of time.

Disease prevention and food recall activists? Consider yourself one of them with the potential of The Extraordinaries.

Comments

[Ben]

Hey Andre - Interesting use case. One critical piece that would need to be in place here is an organization that could make use of the data... So if you submit a photo from a store that's selling tainted goods, for example, - that that photo goes to an org (or individual) that can make use of it to stop the store from continuing to sell the goods.

Nice thinking here...looking forward to your continued exploration of health issues and crowdsourcing.

[Andre Blackman]

You're absolutely right Ben - off the bat, I'm thinking that if the CDC got involved somehow, that would be a great accomplishment. But there are plenty of other organizations that I'm sure would like to pick up on this.

[aion kinah cheap]

Hey Andre - Interesting use case. One critical piece that would need to be in place here is an organization that could make use of the data... So if you submit a photo from a store that's selling tainted goods, for example, - that that photo goes to an org (or individual) that can make use of it to stop the store from continuing to sell the goods.

[bolly]

Citizen/Community based Journalism together with upcoming and widely used .... It collects weighted and vetted crowd sourced crisis data through the .... is a team committed to empowering community health workers in the developing world .... of which preserve community health and improve public health interventions ...