Janina Writes Here: PHBS Workshop:Blogging It and Owning It

#PHBSPart2

I had an AWESOME weekend. So awesome that I'm going to write more than one blogpost about it.

May 3 was the Philippine Health Bloggers Society's Blogging for Health and Wellness workshop. This event was made possible by our awesome partner, Zoomanity Group (literally the happiest place on Earth, ladies and gents), and our sponsors, GLI, Elabram Systems, Gardenia, and Victoria Court. The event was covered by FAME Publishing, Tribune Post, and Kipling Times.

I was also one of the speakers of the said event. It was quite a privilege to be speaking to my fellow health bloggers and those who want to be online influencers for health, so of course I prepared slides (I'm teacher-y like that)! Now I'm sharing them to you.


In the Philippines, if you want to write about health and you only have eye for the surface, you're essentially stuck with the same topic. You and the rest of the health bloggers will be talking about the same banana.

...And so here is our question. This question was something I asked one of the awesome panels in iBlog 10 and they gave me some ideas on how I can be different. But given that I like doing my own research and contemplations, I was also able to come up with answers to my owl question. Tanong ko, sagot ko lang ang peg.

Read more about iBlog10 here.

The thing we want to know about health is that it's not just something physical, but is all-encompassing. A person can't be called healthy if he or she is not physically problematic but has issues on adapting to society (read: psycho). This definition leads to what health in the eyes of a health blogger can be about.

Health is something that is affected by society. And blogging about health doesn't mean you just blog about diseases, it means blogging about policies, practice and people.

And so we go back to this question... and I have three suggestions you may want to consider.

Like I said: health is an all-encompassing topic and most bloggers have just scratched the surface. Why not look into what other things may affect health and write about that? Or about arts and literature present health? Or the how a passion for fashion is related to wellness and disease? You might be surprised about to find out we health bloggers have so much to write about. This is STEP 1.

Look into what other people are writing...and then write something else. Don't stick with just the surface. Dig.

We have a MEMEMEMEME culture in social media. We post pictures, experiences, and thoughts, many of which are self-centered or at least coming from the self. Social Media, after all, is an avenue to be heard. Blogging is about telling your stories. But it can also be about telling stories that are worth telling, like one of our speaker, Ma'am Inday, said. Moreover, we can show our readers stories through different eyes.


Stories of other people are sometimes better than your own. And stories and general can sometimes be better shown through someone else's perspective.

If a blogger is writing about HIV/AIDS for instance, he or she may write from the perspective of an expert and give information regarding the infection. This is how we commonly do it. You can even check out my stuff abour HIV/AIDS and see I tell stories through the perspective of an advocate who shares information. But what about the other side of the story? What about the story of the Person Living with HIV (PLHIV)? Wouldn't it be interesting to know how they survive the infection, how they deal with social stigma? Wouldn't it be wonderful to understand how these people, who are sometimes seen as having a death sentence already, are becoming purpose-filled contributors to society? Also, what is the story behind their support system - their partners, parents, and friends? So many stories could be told, if we just tell these with different voices and from different perspectives.

Whenever I read stuff made by my favorite authors, I would almost always hear their voices in my head. Psycho, I know. J.K. Rowling, for instance, is known to me by her black humor. Karl de Mesa can say "fuck", talk about flayed humans, and incest but still sound way too elegant to be crass. I don't know how he does it, but he does it. Ana Santos is always informative with a touch of sass.

This is what I learned: If you want to stand out, you should have a voice. Is your voice sarcastic or malandi? A combination of sarcastic and malandi like mine?

Whatever that voice is, it gives personality to your writing. You have to let it shine through.