Social Media Policy

Social Media Policy for the Putnam County Health Department

The Putnam County Health Department (“health department’) participates in social media sites to promote activities, events, and information. The department’s goal is to share information with the residents of Putnam County and nearby communities. Social media account(s) of the health department are hosted by web services that are not owned by the health department or Putnam County and have different privacy and security policies. Neither the health department nor Putnam County are responsible for, and do not endorse or guarantee, content, availability, viewpoints, products, or services that are offered or expressed on these platforms

The Putnam County Health Department’s social media account(s) are monitored by staff to inform the public about the health department’s initiatives, activities, and pertinent health information as well as those of our partners. The health department’s goal is to share information with as many individuals as possible and allow comments to be made to our profiles and pages.

• Comments may be deleted if profane or defamatory.
• We monitor our profiles and pages but are not responsible for content generated by users. Posted comments and images do not necessarily represent the views of the health department.
• Our profiles and pages may contain links to other websites. This does not, in any way, directly or indirectly, constitute endorsement by the health department.
• When interacting with other users, please be civil and follow the usage guidelines established by the applicable social networking service(s).v
• We do not allow profanity, obscenity, vulgarity, nudity, defamation, advertising, false information, or political campaigning on the health department’s social media pages. Such content may be removed.
• Comments whose main purpose is to sell a product, those that infringe on copyright, or spam comments, such as the same comment posted repeatedly, may also be removed.
• The focus of social networking opportunities is to share information about the health department’s programs and activities. Larger discussions of healthcare views and philosophies may be addressed elsewhere.
• All links posted as comments on the health department’s pages, posts, or profiles may be deleted if they violate any portion of this policy.
• Also subject to deletion is any information and/or comment(s) that could reasonably compromise the safety of a public official, employee, or member of the public.
• Any disclosure of information that is confidential by law or regulation will be deleted.
• Repeated violations of this social media policy may cause the author to be blocked from the health department’s social media profiles and/or pages.
• If you have a question, please contact the health department to submit a question.

We understand that social media is a 24/7 medium; however, our monitoring
capabilities are not. We may not see every comment or material that is inconsistent with
this policy right away or take prompt action to delete it, and we are trusting in the
maturity, and the civility, of our community to ignore personal attacks and negative
speech and/or to respond politely.