YouTube is teaching its users how to handle medical emergencies. The platform’s Health team has joined forces with organizations like Mass General Brigham and the Mexican Red Cross to stock its new First Aid Information Shelves with information that could potentially save lives.
The First Aid Information Shelves will appear at the top of results pages for relevant searches. For example, if a YouTube user searches for the term “CPR,” they’ll find several official videos from the American Heart Association, including a 60-second clip that teaches the technique to viewers.
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According to a YouTube blog post, the First Aid Information Shelves will provide medical advice related to a variety of conditions and situations, including choking, bleeding, heart attacks, strokes, seizures, and opioid overdoses. The videos included on the shelves are designed to be simple and easy to understand. Though the new feature is only available in the U.S. for now, it is bilingual, offering medical advice in both English and Spanish.
“Our system is committed to providing credible, trusted information to our patients and, more broadly, to people seeking knowledge around the world,” said Merranda Logan, MD, the Associate Chief Academic Officer at Mass General Brigham. “We are thrilled to expand our YouTube educational series to include step-by-step basic first aid and emergency care videos in multiple languages.”
YouTube has also published a CPR course in collaboration with the American Heart Association. The course is free for all participants, and a Spanish-language version is slated to arrive next month on the AHA YouTube channel.
Since the appointment of Dr. Garth Graham as YouTube’s Global Head of Health in 2021, the Google-owned hub has taken great strides to increase the number of authoritative medical voices within its search results. Creators’ personal health stories received a visibility boost in 2022, and YouTube Health inked partnerships with healthcare professionals that same year. 2023 YouTube Health initiatives included the rollout of several health-related features around the globe.
First Aid Information Shelves are YouTube’s latest step in its commitment to medical accuracy. YouTube users in the U.S. can already find them in appropriate search results.
