The use of new media in Shanghai community health service centers: A cross-sectional survey comparing pilot and non-pilot centers for "high-quality development" program

Abstract

Background: New media has become a vital approach for health communication in medical institutions. In October 2022, Shanghai Government launched the "High-Quality Development" program for public hospitals. However, gaps remain between the actual use and development requirements of new media in community health centres. Empirical research is needed to understand the current status and inform improvements.

Objective: To assess the current status of using new media in Shanghai community health centres and compare differences between "High-Quality Development" pilot and non-pilot sites.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective survey of 63 community health centres in Shanghai, consisting of 20 pilot and 43 non-pilot sites. We collected data from January 1 to March 31, 2025, covering usage on WeChat Official Accounts, WeChat Channels, TikTok, and Weibo(Chinese microblogging platform similar to Twitter, widely used for social networking, news sharing, and public communication in China). Analysis focused on platform establishment, content production, dissemination impact, service functionality, and standardization.

Results: (1) Platform Establishment: All community health centres operated WeChat Official Accounts (87.8% verified). Establishment rates were 82.5% for WeChat Channels, 30.2% for TikTok, and 23.8% for Weibo. Pilot sites had a higher TikTok establishment rate (45.0%) than non-pilot sites (23.3%), though the difference was not statistically significant (χ2 =3.064, P =0.08). (2) Contents of information: Pilot sites posted to WeChat Channels significantly more frequently than non-pilot sites (Z=−1.997, P=0.046). Health knowledge dissemination and institutional promotion accounted for 71.7% of total content. Only 19.1% of community health centres published at least one original article. (3) Dissemination Impact: The median number of reads per WeChat Official Account article was 275.9, with an average of 3.8 likes. In contrast, WeChat Channels averaged 36.0 likes per post, approximately 9.5 times higher than text articles. No significant differences were found between groups for these indicators. (4) Service Functionality: While 81% of community health centres established menu bars, fewer than 40% offered substantive medical service functions. (5) Standardization: The rate of proper citation for reposted content was 92.1%, but only 11.1% of posts properly cited academic references. No significant differences were observed between groups regarding functionality or standardization.

Conclusion: WeChat remains the dominant platform for using new media among Shanghai community health centres. Common deficiencies exist in original content production, user interaction, service function development, and standardization. Pilot and non-pilot sites showed no significant differences across most metrics, suggesting that new media capacity building needs to be incorporated into policy evaluation systems with specific standards to facilitate the implementation of “high-quality development” policies. Short-video formats demonstrate potential advantages for user interaction and represent a key direction for optimizing health communication.

Keywords

New media / Community health centres / Health knowledge dissemination / High-quality development / Shanghai

Declarations

Not applicable.

Authors' contributions

Conceptualization, T.W.; Methodology, T.W.; Data curation, G.Y., L.Y., D.T. and L.Y.; Formal analysis, G.Y.; Funding acquisition, not applicable; Project administration, not applicable; Resources, T.W.; Supervision, T.W.; Validation, T.W.; Writing-original draft, G.Y.; Writing-review and editing, T.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The data for this study was obtained from the public information on the new media platforms of community health service centers and does not involve human subjects or personal privacy data. According to the current relevant regulations on ethical review in China, this study does not need to submit an application for ethical review.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no completing interests.

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