Engaging the Military Health Community through Social Media

The Challenge

To strengthen relationships with its nine million beneficiaries and numerous stakeholder communities, the Department of Defense Military Health System (MHS) partnered with Booz Allen Hamilton to leverage social media.
 
Social media technology can help MHS address service members’ healthcare concerns, collaborate with stakeholders, support combat operations, and enhance its capacity to reach and influence diverse audiences. Social media can also support its commitment to address President Obama’s call for a more transparent, participatory, and collaborative government.

MHS engaged Booz Allen to introduce next-generation communication tools to tell the MHS story, highlight tales of heroism and accomplishment, and enrich MHS’s relationships with patients, government agencies, and media outlets.

The Booz Allen Solution

Booz Allen designed and implemented the social media platform for MHS, which provided tools that engaged service members, families, and constituents and promoted health access, research, and education.

The first step for the firm was deploying a team of cross-functional experts in strategic planning, strategic communications, and social networking outreach and implementation, who provided social networking and Web 2.0 expertise and knowledge of industry best practices. The team analyzed key social media sites and MHS’s social media capabilities. Then they prepared and implemented a stakeholder outreach plan using blogs, social networks, and message boards.

Booz Allen also developed social media protocols for engaging stakeholders, and privacy, security, and regulatory standards that streamlined MHS’s collaboration with external audiences and more actively engaged disparate organizations across the sprawling MHS enterprise.

Today, Booz Allen maintains the MHS presence on eight social communities and platforms, including Facebook, MySpace, Del.icio.us, Twitter, YouTube, and TroopTube. Social media enables MHS to engage service members and families where they gather online to publicly discuss military health issues and respond directly to them. MHS leaders can now be more responsive to stakeholder needs by providing relevant health information when and where appropriate, which is helping them build trusted communities, and improve lives.

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