IU doc enjoys growing social media following
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA high-profile central Indiana physician has developed an impressive social media following through his YouTube channel. In addition to serving as chief health officer for Indiana University, Dr. Aaron Carroll is also the face of Healthcare Triage and enjoys a nearly a half million subscribers. His weekly show on the popular video outlet examines and simplifies a variety of health care issues.
During an interview with Inside INdiana Business of Health reporter Kylie Veleta, Carroll said he enjoys diving into health stories that the media is not presenting accurately.
“When I see bad news stories that are covering questionable research in ways that shouldn’t be, we sort of love nicely attacking and dissecting those,” said Carroll. “I think too often, questionable research is used to scare people, and I really enjoy when we can bring people back to normal.”
The Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at the IU School of Medicine started the channel over eight years ago after connecting with John and Hank Green, who run the YouTube channel Vlogbrothers and cited Carroll’s blog in a video about healthcare costs.
Carroll has conducted research on information technology to improve pediatric care and medical decision analysis. He hopes to help families make important decisions and he wants to arm them with accurate information.
“We try to take good research data and evidence and show how they should be applied to people’s conceptions about health,” said Carroll. “This is a different audience and it’s a good way to reach a completely different group of people but with good, sound information.”
The channel’s videos focus on a variety of topics, including COVID-19, the healthcare systems in the U.S. and other countries, and social determinants of health.
Dr. Carroll says he has no interest in becoming the next Dr. Oz. He says the show is just a fun side project for him and he truly enjoys his actual job.
“If you told me like we would have some day half a million subscribers… who would watch videos on topics that I think are important. I would be blown away. No, I never thought we would have this,” Carroll said.
The show is completely independent, not associated with IU.
Carroll says the project is funded mostly by viewer support through online membership platform Patreon, with a small amount of ad revenue from YouTube.