An important part of getting up to speed in my new job as Social Media Manager for Community Health Center, Inc., is to start building up connections with people and organizations that can add a lot to the online discussion about how social media can help improve communities’ health. So, I’m looking at who is retweeting @chcconnecticut or tweeting messages of interest to @chcconnecticut and who I can connect with.

One of the big events last week was CHC receiving half a million dollars in grants from GE Foundation’s “GE Developing Health”. Tweets about the GE Developing Health grants used the #gedh hashtag. One person who mentioned #gedh and @chcconnecticut is @andrea_doane. Her profile says she is a “Communication professional with interests in CSR, leadership and engagement” For those that don’t recognize the acronym CSR, by the context, I assume she is talking about corporate social responsibility. Given that most of her tweets are about GE or social media, I suspect she does some sort of social media work for GE or the GE foundation. CSR is very important in my book, and it looks like Andrea is a person well worth following.

Another area that is very important is the National Association of Community Health Centers. They can be found on twitter at @nachc. @LNReynolds describes herself on Twitter as “Government Affairs and Advocacy for the Ohio and National Associations of Community Health Centers”. She liked a post on the CHC Facebook page about Dr. Howard Koh’s appearance on CHC Radio. @chcradio, or Conversations On Health Care, is a CHC project that airs on radio stations across the country. Dr Koh is an Assistant Secreatry for Health at HHS. @LNReynolds has a lot of interesting tweets.

One of those tweets was announcing that @aabayasekara NACHS’s “Tweet of the Week”. @aabayasekara describes herself as a “Bookworm interested in FQHCs, nonprofit management & marketing, and wandering the planet.” The acronym FQHC stands for Federally Qualified Health Center. @CHCConnecticut is a FQHC.

One final account to follow is @HealthCampCT. There are a bunch of interesting people working together to bring a barcamp style unconference about health care to Connecticut. They are tweeting with the #hcct hashtag. Most of the tweets are likely to show up from individuals using the #hcct hashtag. However in some cases there may tweets from the group as a whole coming from the @HealthCampCT account. In addition, it can provide a nice centralized place for lists and other twitter connectivity.

There is a lot going on in social media in health care, and this is just scratching the surface. If you know of other good social media in health care accounts that I should follow, please let me know.