SaludToday: Curating Latino health information for a new generation

Abstract

Background: The Internet has quickly become a primary source and channel for distributing a multitude of health messages. To ensure health messages are effective and well-received, health communication researchers are constantly seeking new communication strategies to improve health literacy. One of the challenges associated with the widespread availability of online information is a saturated environment with many different messages. To build a trustworthy relationship with consumers, health communicators and other professionals must successfully filter the massive amounts of health information and create succinct and easily consumable health messages. Methods: Curation is an emerging strategy that uses a systematic and refined process to create such messages and prevent mixed messaging and information overload. Through this process information is collected, developed, stored, and shared. Results: The purpose of this article is to: (1) explain online content curation; (2) describe the e-health content curation model; (3) discuss the process of e-health content curation as it applies to a national Latino health campaign called SaludToday. This online content curation model consists of three primary steps: collect–craft–connect, which cohesively provide a systematic approach to identifying, collecting, generating, and disseminating health messages online. Conclusion: With massive amounts of content created across the Internet every minute, health content curation can play a vital role in bringing a particular audience to targeted, relevant and engaging content that has the potential to affect people's knowledge of health issues, attention to health issues, and capacity to make healthy changes.