This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related letter  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Immunization  • Informatics/ Internet in Medicine  • Internet  • Patient Education/ Health Literacy  • Alert me on articles by topic

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

In Reply: Dr Hayanga and Ms Kaiser raise 2 concerns. First, they question the conclusions of our study by suggesting that a more specific keyword search using the term flu shot may give a different picture of the types of messages about immunization being disseminated by YouTube. Second, they doubt whether YouTube should or even could be taken seriously by the medical community.

Our study design and deliberate choice of keywords were based on and consistent with a body of literature examining the public understanding of immunization and the use of the Internet to seek out health information.^1-3 Since the search we conducted in February 2007, many more videos pertaining to immunization have been posted. For example, our initial search term immunization identified 53 results, whereas the same term now yields 168 results, indicating the increasing use of the YouTube site for communicating this type of information.

We doubt that . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Jennifer Keelan, PhD
Department of Public Health Science
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Vera Pavri-Garcia, PhD
Division of Natural Science
York University
Toronto

Kumanan Wilson, MSc, MD
kumanan.wilson@uhn.on.ca
Department of Medicine
University of Toronto

RELATED LETTER

Medical Information on YouTube
Awori J. Hayanga and Heather E. Kaiser
JAMA. 2008;299(12):1424-1425.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT