The Penn team turned to social media for a solution. They organized a contest inviting citizens to take pictures of AEDs around Philadelphia and send them via cell phone to the Penn group. The person who found the most AEDs would win $10,000. “It was a big public-health problem,” Dr. Merchant says. “We thought if we asked for the public’s help, we would have a better chance of finding where the devices were.” People identified more than 1,500 AEDs. Two people each found more than 400. Impressed with those results, Dr. Merchant’s team named them both winners and gave them $9,000 apiece. Schools also participated in the contest and three received an AED each from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Youth Heart Watch. Since the contest in 2012, the Penn group has been cataloguing the AED locations for public maps. With that information, a 911 operator could tell a caller where to find an AED in an emergency. Dr. Merchant sees plenty of other ways for social media to make communities healthier. In a hurricane, for example, people could tap into social media to find out where to get water, food, or medical care. Raina Merchant, M.D. Using social media to make communities healthier You may think of a cell phone as a way to contact a friend or play a game. Dr. Raina Merchant views it as much more. She sees it as a powerful tool to quickly spread health information to the public and potentially save lives. Dr. Merchant is the director of the University of Pennsylvania Social Media and Health Innovation Lab. In that role, she and her team are learning how to use social media to solve important public health problems. For instance, many schools, businesses, and public places possess a life-saving device called an automated external defibrillator— AED for short. An AED can restart a person’s heart with an electric shock. The device is relatively easy to use, even for nonmedical people. The shock it delivers can mean the difference between life and death for someone who is experiencing a cardiac arrest. But Dr. Merchant and her team discovered a problem: Although AEDs can save lives, rescuers often don’t know where to find one in an emergency. 14 Illustration by Alexa Eaton, Marshall Street Healthy Bulletin