[Influencer Marketing in Healthcare: A Review]

Social media influencers play an important role in the (digital) life of millions of Germans. In the health sector, these protagonists and their channels are used not only with commercial intentions, but also increasingly for the communication of health messages. We want to investigate if influencers can play an important role in promoting health. We summarize the current scientific evidence on the use of influencer marketing in health communication.

Selective literature search on PubMed with the search terms "Influencer marketing" and "health" and summary of the results.

We identified 173 publications, from which four fulfilled the inclusion criteria. For the classification of health influencers, we propose 5 categories.

So far, there is only weak evidence for health-promoting effects through the communication of influencers. Both in practice and in science, more knowledge about the health-promoting use of influencers needs to be gained.