IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v15y2018i5p833-d142784.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • 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
    Center for Interprofessional Education & 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
    Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, 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
    Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Jenine K. Harris & Leslie Hinyard & Kate Beatty & Jared B. Hawkins & Elaine O. Nsoesie & Raed Mansour & John S. Brownstein, 2018. "Evaluating the Implementation of a Twitter-Based Foodborne Illness Reporting Tool in the City of St. Louis Department of Health," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(5), pages 1-13, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:5:p:833-:d:142784
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/5/833/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/5/833/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Susan Arendt & Lakshman Rajagopal & Catherine Strohbehn & Nathan Stokes & Janell Meyer & Steven Mandernach, 2013. "Reporting of Foodborne Illness by U.S. Consumers and Healthcare Professionals," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-31, August.
    2. Irwin, K. & Ballard, J. & Grendon, J. & Kobayashi, J., 1989. "Results of routine restaurant inspections can predict outbreaks of foodborne illness: The Seattle-King County experience," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 79(5), pages 586-590.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Louisa Walsh & Nerida Hyett & Nicole Juniper & Chi Li & Sophie Hill, 2022. "The Experiences of Stakeholders Using Social Media as a Tool for Health Service Design and Quality Improvement: A Scoping Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(22), pages 1-29, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rachel A. Oldroyd & Michelle A. Morris & Mark Birkin, 2021. "Predicting Food Safety Compliance for Informed Food Outlet Inspections: A Machine Learning Approach," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(23), pages 1-20, November.
    2. Jorge Mejia & Shawn Mankad & Anandasivam Gopal, 2019. "A for Effort? Using the Crowd to Identify Moral Hazard in New York City Restaurant Hygiene Inspections," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 30(4), pages 1363-1386, December.
    3. Daniel E. Ho & Zoe C. Ashwood & Cassandra Handan-Nader, 2019. "New Evidence on Information Disclosure through Restaurant Hygiene Grading," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 404-428, November.
    4. Eyer, Jonathan, 2018. "The effect of firm size on fracking safety," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 101-113.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:5:p:833-:d:142784. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.