Twitter is an extremely beneficial professional development tool for public health advocates. It allows them to follow public health leaders, who frequently share valuable news, research and resources, which can translate to better practice and even career advancement. Twitter also serves as a wonderful networking tool, letting public health workers communicate with one another, disseminating information and opportunities. If you are new to Twitter, new to public health or new to both, consider following these 10 prominent public health professionals as a way of exploring the social network and the industry: 1. Joseph Padudais the principal of Health Strategy Associates, a national consulting firm specializing in managed care programs, and the author of Managed Care Matters, a blog about health care costs, policy, research and news. His tweets cover a similar range of subjects, from news about prescription drugs to the impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. 2. Maggie Mahar is the creator of Health Beat, a blog covering health care, the economy, politics and public health. She additionally writes for healthinsurance.org, a consumer information site on health care coverage. Mahar’s original tweets tend to cover politics, but she also retweets many health care stories. 3. Jane Sarasohn-Kahn is a health economist, advisor, advocate and blogger at HEALTH Populi, where she writes about health care conferences, news and technology. Her Twitter feed features an ample amount of responses to tweets from other users — bolstering the idea that the social network is a space for public health advocates to gather, talk and even argue! 4. Lynch Ryan is a consulting firm specialized in workers compensation cost control systems. Its blog, Workers’ Comp Insider, covers risk management, business insurance, workplace health and safety, and more. The firm’s Twitter account is an amalgamation of tweets sharing their own blog posts and other stories about policies and politics. 5. David Harlow is a health care lawyer, consultant, speaker and blogger from Boston. On his blog, HealthBlawg, he covers new health care technologies, conferences and research. His Twitter account mostly features his own blog posts, but also includes ongoing conversations with other professionals in the public health field. 6. David Williams is the president of Health Business Group, a strategy consulting boutique on health care services, information technology and pharmaceutical services. He is also the author of Health Business Blog, which covers recent health studies, technologies and policies. On Twitter, he shares his own posts along with news stories and commentary. 7. Rick Ungar is a Forbes contributor and a self-professed “token liberal” on Fox. On Forbes, he covers politics and policy from an admittedly left-wing perspective. His Twitter feed features much back and forth with other users, along with his own articles. 8. Brian Klepper is a health care analyst, advisor and commentator. He is also the founder of Care and Cost, a blog of original commentary on health care and shared stories. On Twitter, Klepper mostly shares many of Care and Cost’s posts. 9. Liz Szabo is a medical reporter who covers cancer, heart disease, pediatrics, public health women’s health and more for USA TODAY. Her tweets share many of her fellow USA TODAY reporter’s stories, along with the latest public health and health care news. 10. Dr. Ali Khan, MD, MPH is the director of the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response — a must-follow for any public health advocate. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Khan shares many of CDC’s tweets alongside information from other government agencies. New public health workers may also be interested in following blogs that cover the industry. For a full list of suggestions, see MPH@GW’s “50 Public Health Blogs worth Connecting with.”
