YouTube partnership launched
South London and Maudsley (SLaM), King’s Health Partners (KHP), and King’s College London (KCL) have partnered with YouTube to help to better inform viewers about key aspects of the most searched health conditions and health topics on YouTube.
YouTube has launched a new mission in health to empower users to live their healthiest lives through knowledge, belonging, and inspiration. Their strategy is concerned in particular with four ‘Rs’ - Removing problematic content, Reducing the spread of harmful or borderline misinformation, Raising up authoritative sources of medical information, and Rewarding partners for authoritative content produced.
As a channel, YouTube is accessed by two billion logged-in viewers each month globally, with 49 million users in the UK and the total video views are growing by 9% year on year. While often considered a channel for young people, in fact 97% of 18-44 year olds in the UK are accessing YouTube each month.
Insights from YouTube show that many users have three types of health needs – information, community support or a sense of belonging, or lifestyle advice. On these first two areas, the new partnership will seek to balance the amount of ‘influencer-led’ content with simple, credible and reliable information from the experts. To do this, YouTube is providing expertise and funding a newly-recruited Digital Content Producer to lead the video creation.
Our vision is to empower patients and the public with trusted information to help promote wellbeing and support proper referral to treatment (or even prevent illness in some cases) for those experiencing mental health concerns.
Over the next few months, we will be producing video content for YouTube and publishing these across our YouTube platforms. We will be approaching you, our experts across SLaM, KHP, and KCL, over the next few months to see if you would like to take part in filming a short video to help inform our audiences on mental health topics.
Our series is called Mind of the Matter: Hear from the Experts.
Our series already has seven videos, including content on depression and anxiety by Simon Arday [pictured above}, content on depression from Prof Sir Simon Wessely, and content on OCD by Dr Amita Jassi.
- For videos on OCD from Dr Amita Jassi view SLaM's playlist here.
- For videos on depression and anxiety from Simon Arday view our playlist here.
- For the video on depression from Prof Sir Simon Wessely view KCL's playlist here.
Based on Google search, the topics which we will be focussing on to develop YouTube videos are Depression, Anxiety, Alcoholism, Eating Disorders and Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder.
If you would like to be part of this series, please contact KHP comms team via kingshealthpartners@kcl.ac.uk.