In 1721, as the lethal smallpox epidemic reached the town of Boston, the Puritan minister Cotton Mather used carefully crafted pamphlets to convince many Bostonians to get inoculated against the virus (1); his campaign helped save thousands of lives and paved the way for the systematic inoculation against smallpox. Two centuries later, as a deadly influenza pandemic was raging through the United States while the government was downplaying the virus,(2) officials in San Francisco decided to act. In October 1918, they published a full-page newspaper advertisement urging the public to" Wear A Mask and Save Your Life!" This and subsequent messaging efforts succeeded in curbing the spread of the virus, saving countless lives. Today, as we are faced with another global pandemic, efficient health communication (2) may represent one of our most effective ways to fight the spread of coronavirus--perhaps secondary only to an effective vaccine, which currently remains elusive.

Health communication has become a powerful tool for promoting awareness of health issues and improving personal health choices. Health communication campaigns, the most utilized method for health messaging, have relied on traditional media to successfully promote health issues, such as awareness about reproductive health, or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and cancer awareness and prevention. Social media has fundamentally changed health communication in new and powerful ways: it reshapes the dynamic between the message sources and audiences; it engages audiences and allows them to shape and amplify information, sometimes on a global scale; it increases interactions with others and enables peer/social emotional support; and it facilitates public health surveil-lance.(3) Social media also provides access to information and enables communication for people of all backgrounds, regardless of their income and geographical location. It has arguably become the great leveler for communication and access to information in the new millennium.