NFZ Health Academy – approaches used by the National Health Fund (NFZ) to promote healthy lifestyle and physical activity among Poles via web and social media during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The idea of health promotion is old but during the COVID-19 Pandemic it has caught the world’s general population’s eye. The Internet has become an important source of health information for patients and the general population of Poland.NFZ’s Health Academy is a portal of the National Health Fund(an agenda of Polish Ministry of Health which is thegovernment’s department) with informational and educational resources designated for medical staff and Polish society.There are multiple e-books, films, diet plans, interviews with medical and health care specialists, training programmes available on NFZ’s Health Academy’s website and social media accounts. However, till this day according to this article’s authors’ best knowledge there has been no evaluation, research or deeper analysis of NFZ’s Health Academy’s content. The aim of the study wasto analyse and describe informational and educational resources available on NFZ’s Health Academy’s website, YouTube channel and Facebook account. The study was conducted usingqualitative of visual ethnographyfocused on analysing texts available on the forementioned sites and social media, and quantitative methods of using Google Trends’ search engine and analysing obtained results.The results of the study show that, The National Health Fund (NFZ) promotes healthy lifestyle and physical activity among Poles via webs and social media during the COVID-19 pandemic in quite effective ways. The quality of information offered by NFZ’s Health Academy compared to other free media is good and you can count on evidence-based health education and promotion. It seems that the informational and educational resources provided by the National Health Fund for the Poles were mostly needed, especially in regions like Zachodniopomorskie voivodeship, Podlaskie voivodeship, Pomorskie voivodeship, Mazowieckie voivodeship and Wamińsko-Mazurskie voivodeship.