New social media campaign on pain control for children

Categories: Research.

The article opens with statistics stating when research is undertaken it generally takes 17 years from the time the research is done to when it is implemented in everyday life. This 17 years is equivalent to a whole childhood, meaning there is an entire generation missing out on important information pertaining to children’s health, and in particular children’s pain.

Dr Christine Chambers along with other doctors from Canada recognized that parents are turning to social media to help their children deal with pain. In  response to this Dr Christine created a YouTube video about ways to handle needle pain. The video was viewed and shared extensively on social media and inspired the creation of more videos, which are now part of an award winning series.

Dr Christine tapped into various social media platforms to spread her message. She collaborated with Public Health Reporter, Andre Picard, who started writing and sharing on children’s pain in his publication. She also connected with parents like Isabel Jordan, who is passionate about advocating and sharing on children’s pain. Finally she connected with Erica Ehm, from YummyMummyClub.ca who shared the video on her blog which resulted in hundreds of thousands of views by parents online.

Dr Christine and Erica came together to develop the “It Doesn’t Have to Hurt” initiative. This initiative led by the Center for Paediatric Pain Research brings together an international group of health researchers, organisations and parents. It aims to get research evidence about children’s pain directly into the hands of parents that can use it.

” The ‘It Doesn’t Have to Hurt’ (#itdoesnthavetohurt) social media campaign will span a 12 month period  (beginning in September 2015) of targeted sharing and discussion of content about children’s pain through blogs, videos, twitter parties, Facebook polls and social media images, all posted and promoted on the YMC website and social media.”

To support #itdoesnthavetohurt and read the full article, click here.  

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