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The article offers a perspective on the role of social media influencers as trusted messengers in tobacco control mass media campaigns. It describes campaigns by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to illustrate how mass media campaigns can leverage influencers to build and optimize campaign, including the Fresh Empire public education campaign, The Real Cost Smokeless Tobacco campaign and This Free Life tobacco prevention campaign.

A correction to the article "Getting Pathologists Out From Behind the Paraffin Curtain: How the College of American Pathologists Began Its Community Outreach and Membership Media Training" that was published in the October 2022 issue is presented.

Journalists have a unique opportunity to educate the community about public health and health care. In order for health communication messages to be effective, characteristics of the intended audience must be considered. Limited attention has been given to health journalists' perceptions of their target communities and little is known about how journalists' perceptions may impact the delivery of health information in the news. Fifteen in-depth telephone interviews were conducted with health journalists from varying geographic regions and media market sizes. Interview questions examined health journalists' perceptions of their target communities, the content and delivery of their health-related stories, and the current state of health journalism. Interviews were audio-recorded for transcription and thematic analysis. Health journalists perceived their audiences to be primarily mothers and adults with limited education. Participants reported they often used personal stories and strong headlines to engage their communities. They also stated that their news stories were quite technical and may not have been written at an appropriate reading level for their audience. When asked about the current state of health journalism, participants reported that there were areas for improvement. Journalists stated that increased collaborations with public health practitioners would improve their own understanding of health and medical information and allow them to develop health news content that was more appropriate for their target communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the expanding use of social media, little has been published about its appropriate role in health promotion, and even less has been written about evaluation. The purpose of this article is threefold: (a) outline purposes for social media in health promotion, (b) identify potential key performance indicators associated with these purposes, and (c) propose evaluation metrics for social media related to the key performance indicators. Process evaluation is presented in this article as an overarching evaluation strategy for social media. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background. Mass media may effect communitywide changes in health awareness, attitude, and behavior, but the approach remains unproven for physical activity.Methods. Wheeling Walks promoted walking among sedentary 50- to 65-year-old adults in a West Virginia city of 31,420 people. This quasi-experimental communication intervention used theory of planned behavior and transtheoretical model constructs to change behavior by promoting 30 min of daily walking through paid media, public relations, and public health activities. Impact was determined by pre- and postintervention telephone surveys with 719 adults in the intervention community and 753 adults in the comparison community and observations of walkers at 10 community sites.Results. Behavior observation showed a 23% increase in the number of walkers in the intervention community versus no change in the comparison community (OR = 1.31, 95% CI = 1.14–1.50). Thirty-two percent (32.2) of the baseline sedentary population in the intervention community reported meeting the CDC/ACSM/Surgeon General recommendation for moderate-intensity physical activity by walking at least 30 min at least five times per week versus 18.0% in the comparison community (OR = 2.12, 95% CI = 1.41–2.24). The intervention community also realized a pre to post increase in positive stage change (P < 0.001).Conclusions. This theory-based mass media campaign demonstrated increases in those meeting the recommended standard for moderate-intensity physical activity through walking and significant positive stage change. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]