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H1N1 and seasonal influenza beware – new heroes have arrived, ready to defend the population and fight a viral battle, via Facebook, in the form of \u2018Flu Fighters!\u2019<\/p>\nH1N1 and seasonal influenza beware – new heroes have arrived, ready to defend the population and fight a viral battle, via Facebook, in the form of \u2018Flu Fighters!\u2019<\/p>\n
Developed by researchers at Children\u2019s Hospital Boston, in collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)<\/a>, a new Facebook application called \u201cI\u2019m a Flu Fighter!\u201d<\/a> gives you the opportunity to mobilize and take action against the threat of influenza \u2013 by telling your friends that you got the H1N1\/seasonal flu vaccine and encouraging them to do the same. Launching as part of National Influenza Vaccination Week<\/a>, the app also provides information on influenza \u2013 including a flu vaccine locator \u2013 courtesy of HHS\u2019s Flu.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n The app is garnering high profile attention and was even plugged on the White House blog<\/a> on Saturday by Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The application is part of the HealthySocial project<\/a>, founded two years ago by Ben Reis, PhD,<\/a> of the Children\u2019s Hospital Informatics Program<\/a> (CHIP). CHIP has been instrumental in connecting the public with health care issues through technology. Reis and his team are working on a range of free social apps that allow users to collaborate with their friends to encourage better health.<\/p>\n \u201cSocial networks have tremendous potential to do good in the world,\u201d says Reis. \u201cBy leveraging existing social connections, people can spread positive health behaviors and attitudes amongst their friends and loved ones.\u201d<\/p>\n This isn’t the first social media tool that tracks flu to come out of CHIP<\/a>. In September, they released a free iPhone app called \u201cOutbreaks Near Me<\/a>,\u201d which tracks disease outbreaks in real time. The app got a lot of press coverage, including articles in the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, Time<\/a>, ABC News<\/a>, USA Today<\/a> and Scientific American<\/a>.<\/p>\n \t H1N1 and seasonal influenza beware – new heroes have arrived, ready to defend the population and fight a viral battle, via Facebook, in the form of \u2018Flu Fighters!\u2019 Developed by researchers at Children\u2019s Hospital Boston, in collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a new Facebook application called \u201cI\u2019m a Flu Fighter!\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":481,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/481"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"email\"](\"http:\/\/childrenshospitalblog.org\/wp-content\/plugins\/sociable\/images\/email_link.png\" "\\"email\\"")
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