This week has marked several moments where politicians are taking action and garnering reactions online, from international war to state Medicaid expansion.

In one case, Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg flew to Tel Aviv after the FAA announced a ban on flights to the airport. His tweet – “This evening I will be flying on El Al to Tel Aviv to demonstrate that it is safe to fly in and out of Israel” – garnered 1,341 retweets, as well as mounds of international news. It also opened the dialogue around how the FAA handles flight patterns for warzones, a not-often publicly addressed issue.

More relevant to health care, a current Republican mayor from Belhaven, N.C., is trekking on foot from his hometown to the White House to raise awareness about and to fight for Medicaid expansion. Not to overstate this, but it is worth underscoring that Mayor Adam O’Neal is advocating for Medicaid expansion against state leaders from his own Republican Party.

O’Neal’s journey is nearly 300 miles over 14 days, and he has been tweeting along the way. He created a hashtag – #saveourhospital – and a website at www.saveourhospital.org. This multi-faceted effort is not just because North Carolina has yet to expand Medicaid. It is specifically in response to the devastation the recently closed Pungo Hospital leaves for the people of Belhaven.

According to the website, thousands of people now must travel as far as 84 miles to receive critical care. The site also says O’Neal is walking in honor of Portia Gibbs, 48, “the first person to die for lack of emergency care since the hospital’s closing.”

These efforts – of course not social media alone – have helped garner national attention for a town otherwise unknown to the majority of Americans. News coverage spanned Esquire and the Huffington Post and Modern Healthcare. Even the head of the local NAACP chapter Rev. William Barber appeared on Bill Maher’s HBO talk show Real Time to discuss the issue. It also came up in our staff meeting yesterday.

The spread of this story is a testament to the importance of taking action, of engaging people, and of telling the human side of these often technical or financial issues. It may not lead to victory, but education and awareness are the first steps toward change, and social media is a free and incredibly useful tool for both of those pieces.

Are you following O’Neal’s journey? What are people saying about it in your community?