The National Library of Medicine is pleased to announce the release of four consumer health explainer videos.
Video is the most popular type of content shared on social media today.
But can the National Library of Medicine (NLM) capitalize on this trend? This question is being explored by Jeff Day, a post-doctoral fellow with the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications Audiovisual Program Development Branch. He has been working with MedlinePlus to produce and share explainer animations through the NLM YouTube page and MedlinePlus Facebook page since September of 2017, and so far the results have been promising.
One explainer animation on antibiotic resistance was shown to increase MedlinePlus’s Facebook reach by over 25 times during the month that the video was released. Reach is a measurement of how many people’s social media feeds a post shows up in and it is increased by people engaging with and sharing the content. Improving reach is important for increasing the number of people discovering content from NLM, including new out-of-network users.
In addition to popularity on social media, explainer animations are great for accessibility. The videos help present health content quickly, are Section 508 compliant, and can be beneficial for low-literacy viewers.
Topics for the videos are chosen based on upcoming MedlinePlus magazine articles and the videos are vetted by NIH IC’s. MedlinePlus sees more Spanish users than English users, so the team is also working on producing Spanish versions of the videos.
The team hopes that over time the videos may develop a bit of a following to improve their visibility and searchability. So far, four videos have been shared and each video takes about 2-4 months to produce from script to final animation. This year, the videos Cholesterol Good and Bad and Antibiotics vs. Bacteria: Fighting the Resistance earned awards at the Association of Medical Illustrators meeting. The team hopes to keep up the production and is currently working on a naloxone and opioid overdose video with NIDA.
If you would like to see, share or follow the videos you can look for the NLM YouTube page, which now has a MedlinePlus playlist. Or you can just click the links below!
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The videos explored branding over time, from MedlinePlus magazine, to MedlinePlus, to US National Library of Medicine.
[Chronological order of videos: 1. Gluten and Celiac Disease; 2. Histamine; 3. Antibiotics vs. Bacteria; 4. Cholesterol]
