Dataset Information

Social Media as a Tool to Promote Health Awareness: Results from an Online Cervical Cancer Prevention Study.

ABSTRACT: Online social media platforms represent a promising opportunity for public health promotion. Research is limited, however, on the effectiveness of social media at improving knowledge and awareness of health topics and motivating healthy behavior change. Therefore, we investigated whether participation in an online social media platform and receipt of brief, tailored messages is effective at increasing knowledge, awareness, and prevention behaviors related to human papillomavirus (HPV) and cervical cancer. We conducted an online study in which 782 recruited participants were consecutively assigned to nine-person groups on a social media platform. Participants were shown a unique random set of 20 tailored messages per day over five days. Participants completed a baseline and post survey to assess their knowledge, awareness, and prevention behaviors related to HPV and cervical cancer. There were no statistically significant changes in knowledge and prevention behaviors from the baseline to the post survey among study participants. There was a modest, statistically significant change in response to whether participants had ever heard of HPV, increasing from 90 to 94% (p?=?0.003). Our findings suggest that most study participants had substantial knowledge, awareness, and engagement in positive behaviors related to cervical cancer prevention at the start of the study. Nevertheless, we found that HPV awareness can be increased through brief participation in an online social media platform and receipt of tailored health messages. Further investigation that explores how social media can be used to improve knowledge and adoption of healthy behaviors related to cervical cancer is warranted.

SUBMITTER: Lyson HC

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6289895 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Social Media as a Tool to Promote Health Awareness: Results from an Online Cervical Cancer Prevention Study.

Lyson Helena C HC Le Gem M GM Zhang Jingwen J Rivadeneira Natalie N Lyles Courtney C Radcliffe Kate K Pasick Rena J RJ Sawaya George G Sarkar Urmimala U Centola Damon D

Journal of cancer education : the official journal of the American Association for Cancer Education 20190801 4

Online social media platforms represent a promising opportunity for public health promotion. Research is limited, however, on the effectiveness of social media at improving knowledge and awareness of health topics and motivating healthy behavior change. Therefore, we investigated whether participation in an online social media platform and receipt of brief, tailored messages is effective at increasing knowledge, awareness, and prevention behaviors related to human papillomavirus (HPV) and cervic ...[more]

PMID: 29948924

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Project description:BackgroundInnovative approaches to the dissemination of evidence-based COVID-19 health messages are urgently needed to counter social media misinformation about the pandemic. To this end, we designed a short, wordless, animated global health communication video (the CoVideo), which was rapidly distributed through social media channels to an international audience.ObjectiveThe objectives of this study were to (1) establish the CoVideo's effectiveness in improving COVID-19 prevention knowledge, and (2) establish the CoVideo's effectiveness in increasing behavioral intent toward COVID-19 prevention.MethodsIn May and June 2020, we enrolled 15,163 online participants from the United States, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Spain. We randomized participants to (1) the CoVideo arm, (2) an attention placebo control (APC) arm, and (3) a do-nothing arm, and presented 18 knowledge questions about preventive COVID-19 behaviors, which was our first primary endpoint. To measure behavioral intent, our second primary endpoint, we randomized participants in each arm to five list experiments.ResultsGlobally, the video intervention was viewed 1.2 million times within the first 10 days of its release and more than 15 million times within the first 4 months. Knowledge in the CoVideo arm was significantly higher (mean 16.95, 95% CI 16.91-16.99) than in the do-nothing (mean 16.86, 95% CI 16.83-16.90; P<.001) arm. We observed high baseline levels of behavioral intent to perform many of the preventive behaviors featured in the video intervention. We were only able to detect a statistically significant impact of the CoVideo on one of the five preventive behaviors.ConclusionsDespite high baseline levels, the intervention was effective at boosting knowledge of COVID-19 prevention. We were only able to capture a measurable change in behavioral intent toward one of the five COVID-19 preventive behaviors examined in this study. The global reach of this health communication intervention and the high voluntary engagement of trial participants highlight several innovative features that could inform the design and dissemination of public health messages. Short, wordless, animated videos, distributed by health authorities via social media, may be an effective pathway for rapid global health communication during health crises.Trial registrationGerman Clinical Trials Register DRKS00021582; https://tinyurl.com/6r4zkbbn.International registered report identifier (irrid)RR2-10.1186/s13063-020-04942-7.

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Project description:BackgroundSuicide is a great public health challenge. Two hundred million people attempt suicide in China annually. Existing suicide prevention programs require the help-seeking initiative of suicidal individuals, but many of them have a low motivation to seek the required help. We propose that a proactive and targeted suicide prevention strategy can prompt more people with suicidal thoughts and behaviors to seek help.ObjectiveThe goal of the research was to test the feasibility and acceptability of Proactive Suicide Prevention Online (PSPO), a new approach based on social media that combines proactive identification of suicide-prone individuals with specialized crisis management.MethodsWe first located a microblog group online. Their comments on a suicide note were analyzed by experts to provide a training set for the machine learning models for suicide identification. The best-performing model was used to automatically identify posts that suggested suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Next, a microblog direct message containing crisis management information, including measures that covered suicide-related issues, depression, help-seeking behavior and an acceptability test, was sent to users who had been identified by the model to be at risk of suicide. For those who replied to the message, trained counselors provided tailored crisis management. The Simplified Chinese Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count was also used to analyze the users' psycholinguistic texts in 1-month time slots prior to and postconsultation.ResultsA total of 27,007 comments made in April 2017 were analyzed. Among these, 2786 (10.32%) were classified as indicative of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The performance of the detection model was good, with high precision (.86), recall (.78), F-measure (.86), and accuracy (.88). Between July 3, 2017, and July 3, 2018, we sent out a total of 24,727 direct messages to 12,486 social media users, and 5542 (44.39%) responded. Over one-third of the users who were contacted completed the questionnaires included in the direct message. Of the valid responses, 89.73% (1259/1403) reported suicidal ideation, but more than half (725/1403, 51.67%) reported that they had not sought help. The 9-Item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) mean score was 17.40 (SD 5.98). More than two-thirds of the participants (968/1403, 69.00%) thought the PSPO approach was acceptable. Moreover, 2321 users replied to the direct message. In a comparison of the frequency of word usage in their microblog posts 1-month before and after the consultation, we found that the frequency of death-oriented words significantly declined while the frequency of future-oriented words significantly increased.ConclusionsThe PSPO model is suitable for identifying populations that are at risk of suicide. When followed up with proactive crisis management, it may be a useful supplement to existing prevention programs because it has the potential to increase the accessibility of antisuicide information to people with suicidal thoughts and behaviors but a low motivation to seek help.

Dataset Information

Social Media as a Tool to Promote Health Awareness: Results from an Online Cervical Cancer Prevention Study.

Publications

Social Media as a Tool to Promote Health Awareness: Results from an Online Cervical Cancer Prevention Study.

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