Scientific info on social networks could help solve major global health issues

In an initiative to use networks to spread messages about public health knowledge, Noshir Contractor and his collaborators are combining social networks with knowledge about social motives to influence the adoption of family health innovations.

The Northwestern University Professor said that the challenge is not that there are no solutions to solve major societal problems, but the struggle is with how to take a known solution and get a large number of people to use it, which highlights the big gap between what science offers us and what gets applied.

Contractor is currently working on implementing digital dashboards to provide information to help health officials interested in scaling up innovations, identify who is likely to influence whom and with what message, thus using networks to do something very actionable and solve major world problems.

The study was published in the September issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.