While some have criticized the government for its seemingly slow response to the salmonella outbreak that was eventually traced to a manufacturer that processes peanut butter for institutional use and for additives in other products, federal agencies used an innovative approach to warn the public once the source of the illness was identified.

In December, before the manufacturer voluntarily stopped production of the peanut products associated with the salmonella outbreak, communications officials with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reached out to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to coordinate information campaigns and use all available forms of media, including new social media.

FDA created a database of recalled products, which the public could search either by product name or category. HHS and CDC then took the database and created a widget - a small online application that can be posted on other websites. The widget allowed users to search FDA’s database directly from the website.

State and local health agencies and other organizations posted the widget and it was used 1.4 million times in just nine days.

FDA also launched a subject-specific blog on its website, which informed readers about the latest news and updates on the outbreak, and created a Twitter account and used that every time a new product was added to the recall list.

CDC has an existing presence on two prominent social networking sites, MySpace and Second Life. It also routinely reaches out to prominent health bloggers on specific issues. For the peanut butter recall, they invited major “mommy” bloggers to talk with FDA and CDC experts.

Officials are pleased with the results of their efforts, but realize that the speed of social media causes new challenges.

“It has to be a balance between having every word vetted and absolutely perfect and getting information out in a timely fashion,” Dick Stapleton, deputy director of the Web communications and new media division at HHS, told Nextgov. “There’s a constant tension between those two ends.”
 

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