Evaluating the Implementation of a Twitter-Based Foodborne Illness Reporting Tool in the City of St. Louis Department of Health

Jenine K. Harris, Leslie Hinyard, Kate Beatty, Jared B. Hawkins, Elaine O. Nsoesie, Raed Mansour and John S. Brownstein
Additional contact information
Jenine K. Harris: Brown School, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA
Leslie Hinyard: Center for Health Outcomes Research, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO 63104, USA
Kate Beatty: Health Services Management and Policy, College of Public Health, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN 37614, USA
Jared B. Hawkins: Computational Health Informatics Program, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Elaine O. Nsoesie: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98121, USA
Raed Mansour: Chicago Department of Public Health, Chicago, IL 60604, USA
John S. Brownstein: Computational Health Informatics Program, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 5, 1-13

Abstract: Foodborne illness is a serious and preventable public health problem affecting 1 in 6 Americans with cost estimates over $50 billion annually. Local health departments license and inspect restaurants to ensure food safety and respond to reports of suspected foodborne illness. The City of St. Louis Department of Health adopted the HealthMap Foodborne Dashboard (Dashboard), a tool that monitors Twitter for tweets about food poisoning in a geographic area and allows the health department to respond. We evaluated the implementation by interviewing employees of the City of St. Louis Department of Health involved in food safety. We interviewed epidemiologists, environmental health specialists, health services specialists, food inspectors, and public information officers. Participants viewed engaging innovation participants and executing the innovation as challenges while they felt the Dashboard had relative advantage over existing reporting methods and was not complex once in place. This study is the first to examine practitioner perceptions of the implementation of a new technology in a local health department. Similar implementation projects should focus more on process by developing clear and comprehensive plans to educate and involve stakeholders prior to implementation.

Keywords: food safety; implementation; local health department; Twitter; consolidated framework for implementation research; CFIR (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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