title: Using Social Networking Sites for Communicable Disease Control: Innovative Contact Tracing or Breach of Confidentiality?
abstract: Social media applications such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have attained huge popularity, with more than three billion people and organizations predicted to have a social networking account by 2015. Social media offers a rapid avenue of communication with the public and has potential benefits for communicable disease control and surveillance. However, its application in everyday public health practice raises a number of important issues around confidentiality and autonomy. We report here a case from local level health protection where the friend of an individual with meningococcal septicaemia used a social networking site to notify potential contacts.
authors.affiliation: Wellcome Trust Research Fellow, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
authors.forename: Kate L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Mandeville
authors.affiliation: Academic Clinical Lecturer in Public Health, Imperial College London.
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.affiliation: Consultant in Communicable Disease Control, North West London Health Protection Team, Public Health England.
authors.forename: H Lucy
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.affiliation: Consultant in Communicable Disease Control, North West London Health Protection Team, Public Health England.
authors.forename: Yimmy
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chow
authors.affiliation: Consultant in Communicable Disease Control, North West London Health Protection Team, Public Health England.
authors.forename: Claude
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Seng