Mastodon How to Make the NEJM Early Palliative Care Article Spread ~ Pallimed

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

How to Make the NEJM Early Palliative Care Article Spread

Photo by Flickr user:  ttstam -Terence T.S. Tam
(NOTE: Keep checking this post for frequent updates to news orgs, blogs, etc talking about this story, then go comment on them!)
As many of you have heard and will be hearing more about, a great new study establishing early palliative care intervention in metastatic non-small cell lung cancer was published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine.  This is a state of the science article for many reasons as Lyle eloquently discussed in the lead post for Pallimed this week.  The basics of the study show palliative care teams along with standard chemotherapy can improve survival nearly 3 months along with decreased depression and improved quality of life (QOL) scores.
You will surely be excited as your organization(s) (hospice, hospital, palliative care list-serv, national association, etc.) and peers email each other about it and talk about it in team meeting.  We will all chatter excitedly about how this can help promote palliative care beyond the 'death panel' screeds of last summer.  Within our palliative focused professional groups this study will echo around until the in-group saturation is nearly 100%.
But what if we did the same thing with our external groups?
What if all the excited discussions landing in our email inbox
and discussed during our IDT actually were turned outward for the public to see?
We need to spread the simple ideas this research demonstrates to a wide audience.  And we can do it for nearly zero cost.  I will give you some basic ideas so you and your network can do the work of 10,000 billboards with 10 minutes at your computer.  I hope you share some ideas in the comments section.
Basically the more comments, more 'Like' buttons, more 'Digg' buttons, etc the better!
NEJM site:
  • Share the link (with free PDF) instead of emailing the pdf. Why? If NEJM gets a TON of hits for this link:
  • Sharing the link will raise it up to the most viewed on the NEJM site and maybe the NEJM editors will take notice what a popular subject palliative care is and publish more studies.
  • Consider using the 'email' function from the NEJM site, also helping boost the 'most emailed article ' numbers, leading to more front page attention.
  • Write a letter to the editor with your peers.  I'll write one with you if you want.  The more letters sent, the more letters published. That makes a lot of people take notice.
Newspapers/Television:
*From Pallimed reader Emily!
    Facebook:
    • Go to the Facebook Fan Pages of the NEJM, NHPCO, AAHPM, HPNA, CAPC, Pallimed, GeriPal and others and start clicking the like buttons in addition to leaving a comment about this article.  The more we show activity the more people will join in the conversation.
    • Share the article on your Facebook Page, or better yet, share the link from one of the Facebook Fan Pages listed above and give them some attention too!
    • If your friends share this article, go comment on it, even if you commented somewhere else.  Someone in their network who doesn't know you will see your intelligent comment and maybe pass it on because they see people excited about it.
    • Make your 'Privacy options' of this particular Facebook post 'Everyone' - This actually helps in search engine rankings to get this article noticed more.
    Blogs:
    Twitter: 
    • Yeah I know not a lot of you are on Twitter, but you can still jump on the bandwagon.  Try searching for '#NEJM', '@NEJM',  '#hpm' or '#palliative' in the next few days and you will see what a lot of people are saying about the study. And them maybe you might want to join in the conversation.  If you are already on Twitter, reply to those people, follow them and support them!  They may be some of our best allies and advocates.  I am sure many of them would appreciate some attention from other palliative care supporters and it helps build our network.
    • Read through the Tweetchat transcript from Wednesday the 18th of August to see people talking about what we can do with this research and how to spread the message.
    • Here are a list of Twitter Talking Points to tweet that are less than 140-characters highlighting the main results (idea via @jsperber):
      • Palliative care + Chemo bests Chemo alone - #NYT #NEJM http://nyti.ms/cNGRDQ #cancer #HPM
      • Grndbreaking study @NEJM on Early Palliative Care Metastatic Lung #Cancer improved QOL & survival http://bit.ly/cQH6GU #HPM
      • Major results in the treatment of lung cancer. @NEJM http://bit.ly/cQH6GU #hpm cc: @livestrong @AmericanCancer @lungCAN
      • Here is a link to the abstract @NEJM: http://bit.ly/bq5r07 The PDF is free and don't forget @DianeEMeier editorial too #hpm
    Other ideas:
    Digg/Yahoo Buzz/StumbleUpon: If you use any of the news aggregation sites that rely on voting, submit your links to me and I will post them here for other people to vote up! Here is my Digg! account so you can easily Digg up a few articles. In just 3 hours one of these articles got 69 Diggs (clicks of support!)
    Slideshare/Scribd: Make your own 5-10 slide slidedeck highlighting why this is important and upload it.  Let me know if you do, we may see lots of creativity in how to show it off.
    LinkedIn: Share this in relevant groups if you are active here.  Go comment and like these articles too.
    Come on people let's make this thing shine!  And it is up to you to tell your people on the list-serv and in your organization about this post, so you can empower them to do more!
    Link to this post: http://www.pallimed.org/2010/08/how-to-make-nejm-early-palliative-care.html

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