Like many Americans (and others around the world) I have been closely watching the swine flu public health crisis unfold with great interest. However, I am also looking at it to see how HHS and CDC have applied the many lessons they have learned about new media/social media communications to work in real time. One of the things I mentioned during my talk at Social Pharmer last week is the importance of starting small so that you have the skills and understanding to launch large-scale social media-related communications efforts in the future. CDC and HHS have clearly learned this lesson.
To better understand how HHS is leveraging social media tools like Twitter and widgets to communicate with the public, please see this post from the AIDS.gov blog.