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Welcome to the Social-Identity-Mapping-Tool wiki!
The Social Identity Mapping Tool is a web-based prototype for mapping social relationships, alcohol and drug use and other risky behaviours, developed as part of Health Hack 2015 at the Melbourne site.
- Ramez Bathish (Problem owner)
- Tim Osborn
- Antt
- Andy Kitchen
- Max Craigie
- Michelle Zhao
- Brad Trewhella
- Les Kitchen
- Jess
- Health Hack
- Github Project Page
- Githib Wiki (This page)
- Trello Page
Mapping social relationships, alcohol and drug use and other risky behaviours.
Ramez is a social-science researcher working for Monash University at Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre. He's currently working on a national research project (SONAR) about how social connectedness impacts recovery prospects among people with alcohol and drug problems. Part of that project has been the development of a novel paper-based mapping intervention for use in AOD (Alcohol and Other Drugs) rehabs which ultimately they're hoping to develop into an interactive digital tool (for mobile devices or web).
The reason they’re looking at the link between social connectedness and AOD use is because social relationships can have a powerful effect on our health and wellbeing. However, these effects are typically complex: Social relationships can either heal or harm, (or they can do both or neither). For instance research has shown that adding one friend to your social network confers similar benefits to stopping smoking, exceeding other well-established risk factors including obesity and physical inactivity. Using this ‘social cure’ paradigm we have developed a novel social relationship mapping intervention we are currently piloting at a range of alcohol and other drug (AOD) rehabs across Australia, which we’d like to develop into a tool for mobile devices.
The current paper-based tool uses sticky notes, stickers and markers to enable people to map out their social group memberships and patterns of alcohol and drug use. This visual method can simplify an often complex reality enabling people to better understand how their substance use impacts their social lives and vice versa.
In the longer term, we would like to develop an interactive digital visual platform that allows people to audit, visualise and map their social relationships and substance use.
While primarily this will be a tool to assist people to account for the way social and environmental contexts affect their lives (and in particular their AOD use), this tool could also provide a platform for data collection and help answer research questions about the link between social connectedness, problematic substance use and health and wellbeing.
One of the exciting things about this tool is broad functionality. While this tool is currently being used in an AOD setting, this intervention could be adapted to apply to any range of risky behaviours for use by clinicians and consumers alike (smoking, gambling, etc.).
At Health Hack this year, we are developing an open-source web-based prototype of this tool. While developing a working prototype is an ambitious goal for a weekend, at its heart this is a simple tool, with four variables required per group.
We are really excited by the prospect of developing an open-source tool that would provide a platform for people to affect positive change in their lives and increase health and wellbeing, while simultaneously leading to improvements in understanding about the link between social connectedness, problematic substance use and health and wellbeing.