New study looks at FDA's use of social media to communicate on drug safety

FDA could better communicate about drug safety on social media by taking a more active role on web platforms, a new study indicates. The study—conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School, Northeastern University, Boston Children's Hospital, and The Ohio State University, and funded by FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research—looked at FDA's use of social media following two drug safety communications (DSCs) for drugs containing zolpidem. In 2013, FDA issued two DSCs related to zolpidem. For the first DSC, FDA posted once to its Facebook account and tweeted 6 times across its three accounts, for a total of 111 retweets. For the second DSC, FDA did not post to Facebook and only tweeted about the DSC on one account, though the agency also tweeted generally about a group of recent prescribing changes, including for zolpidem, from its other account. The authors observed a greater social media response from both Twitter and Facebook users following the first DSC. According to the authors, this is because in addition to posting about the first DSC more frequently and to more of its accounts, the first DSC was issued with an accompanying press release. The authors of the study recommend that FDA develop strategies for how and how often to post different types of messages to better its social media presence in the future. "Since there can be a lot of questionable information shared on social media, the FDA should be able to leverage its independent expertise and position as a widely trusted source of information to help promote accurate and informative messages," said Michael Sinha, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and lead author on the paper. "In the case of the zolpidem safety alerts, the FDA took some steps to do that, but could create more outreach and disseminate its materials more frequently via varied platforms."