A systematic review of Twitter’s hashtags in public health: an example of a globally adopted standard

The objective is to find evidence and make recommendations on the use of Twitter in public health,particularly through the study of hashtags(#). This systematic review shows the use of Twitter in different areas of public health: epidemiological surveillance, health promotion, health protection and disease prevention. Articles on this subject published in indexed journals with impact factor show the importance of conversations to engage the attention of Twitter users by using citations (@ user) and retweets(RT); however, not much importance seems to be given to the use of hashtags(#), which are often assimilated to the concept of keywords. Although tracking recurring hashtagsshould be less expensive than computing Twitter content, the potential of hashtaggeddata has not been properly exploited or recognized over the past years, probably due to the lack of efficient tools.

Testing of stair climbing point-of-choice prompts in Barcelona at an outdoor set of stairs and scalators on the Montjuïc site

Regular stair climbing has well-documented health dividends, such as increased fitness and strength, weight loss and reduced body fat, improved lipid profiles and reduced risk of osteoporosis. The general absence of barriers to participation makes stair climbing an ideal physical activity (PA) for health promotion. Studies in the US and the UK have consistently shown that interventions to increase the accumulation of lifestyle PA by climbing stairs rather than using the escalators are effective. However, there are no previous in Catalonia. This project tested one message for their ability to prompt travelers on the Montjuïc site to choose the stairs rather than the escalator when climbing up the Monjuïc hill. One standard message, " Take the stairs! 7 minutes of stair climbing a day protects your heart" provided a comparison with previous research done in the UK. Translated into Catalan and Spanish, it was presented on a poster positioned at the point of choice between the stairs and the escalator. The study used a quasi-experimental, interrupted time series design. Travelers, during several and specific hours on two days of the week, were coded for stair or escalator use, gender, age, ethnic status, presence of accompanying children or bags by one observer. Overall, the intervention resulted in a 81% increase in stair climbing. In the follow-up period without messages, stair climbing dropped out to baseline levels. This preliminary study showed a significant effect on stair use. However, caution is needed since results are based on a small sample and, only a low percentage of the sample took the stairs at baseline or the intervention phase . Future research on stair use in Catalonia should focus on using bigger samples, different sites (metro stations, airports, shopping centers, etc) , different messages and techniques to promote stair climbing.