[Air-L] Ethical issues in the use of Facebook as a health intervention

[Osman Ahmed]

Dear AIoR's,

I am a PhD candidate at the University of Otago, Dunedin where I am looking at the use of Social Networking Sites as a means of facilitating recovery from sports concussion. Our preliminary work (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20367328) showed that concussion groups on Facebook were being using as a support facility for those who had suffered a concussion. As a follow up to this, we conducted Focus Group studies with local individuals who had been recently concussed, and the feedback we got suggested that individuals who had sustained a concussion would be keen to receive support online from their peers and have interaction with a Doctor through a Facebook concussion group.

We are in the process of planning a trial of a Facebook group for individuals with a sports concussion(moderated/facilitated by a Doctor and Sport Physiotherapist) in the near future and we are trying to identify all of the potential ethical issues. Obviously the Facebook group would be "secret" (visible only to the Doctor and the users in the group), and everyone in the group would be made aware of the option of adjusting the privacy settings of their Facebook account prior to entering the group. The Facebook profile used by the Doctor would be one created exclusively for the purposes of the study i.e. contain no personal/social information related to the Doctor. The Facebook group would not replace the user's GP as a point of reference, and the users would be instructed to cease participation in the group if they felt it exacerbated their symptoms.

I would be very interested in hearing from anyone who has any history or experience in using Social Networking Sites for either health promotion or as a health intervention, as this field is in its infancy. If any of you have any suggestions or ethical issues you can forsee in such a trial then it would be great to hear from you too!

Best wishes and thanks for your time,

Osman Ahmed
PhD Candidate
School of Physiotherapy
University of Otago
Dunedin
New Zealand