HealthSource: A Web based public health awareness with heat map on common illnesses using social media stream

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arlene O. Trillanes ◽  
Bernie S. Fabito ◽  
Ma. Corazon G. Fernando ◽  
Maria Rizza L. Armildez ◽  
Maria Rosario D. Rodavia
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Health Awareness ◽  
Heat Map ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Common Illnesses ◽  
Media Stream

Estimating the number of cases during COVID-19 pandemics using a web-based tool: first week results of “COVID-19 TRENDS” social media project in the Araba-Alava province in Basque country, Spain. (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignacio Garitano ◽  
Manuel Linares ◽  
Laura Santos ◽  
Ruth Gil ◽  
Elena Lapuente ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Response Rate ◽  
Basque Country ◽  
Case Definition ◽  
Public Health Action ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Health Action ◽  
Estimate Number ◽  
Media Project

UNSTRUCTURED On 28th February a case of COVID-19 was declared in Araba-Álava province, Spain. In Spain, a confinement and movement restrictions were established by Spanish Government at 14th March 2020. We implemented a web-based tool to estimate number of cases during the pandemic. We present the results in Áraba-Álava province. We reached a response rate of 10,3% out a 331.549 population. We found that 22,4 % fulfilled the case definition. This tool rendered useful to inform public health action.

scholarly journals A Men Who Have Sex With Men–Friendly Doctor Finder Hackathon in Guangzhou, China: Development of a Mobile Health Intervention to Enhance Health Care Utilization (Preprint)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunyan Li ◽  
Yuan Xiong ◽  
Hao Fong Sit ◽  
Weiming Tang ◽  
Brian J Hall ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Mobile Health ◽  
Clinical Medicine ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Mhealth Intervention ◽  
Sex With Men

BACKGROUND Mobile health (mHeath)–based HIV and sexual health promotion among men who have sex with men (MSM) is feasible in low- and middle-income settings. However, many currently available mHealth tools on the market were developed by the private sector for profit and have limited input from MSM communities. OBJECTIVE A health hackathon is an intensive contest that brings together participants from multidisciplinary backgrounds to develop a proposed solution for a specific health issue within a short period. The purpose of this paper was to describe a hackathon event that aimed to develop an mHealth tool to enhance health care (specifically HIV prevention) utilization among Chinese MSM, summarize characteristics of the final prototypes, and discuss implications for future mHealth intervention development. METHODS The hackathon took place in Guangzhou, China. An open call for hackathon participants was advertised on 3 Chinese social media platforms, including Blued, a popular social networking app among MSM. All applicants completed a Web-based survey and were then scored. The top scoring applicants were grouped into teams based on their skills and content area expertise. Each team was allowed 1 month to prepare for the hackathon. The teams then came together in person with on-site expert mentorship for a 72-hour hackathon contest to develop and present mHealth prototype solutions. The judging panel included experts in psychology, public health, computer science, social media, clinical medicine, and MSM advocacy. The final prototypes were evaluated based on innovation, usability, and feasibility. RESULTS We received 92 applicants, and 38 of them were selected to attend the April 2019 hackathon. A total of 8 teams were formed, including expertise in computer science, user interface design, business or marketing, clinical medicine, and public health. Moreover, 24 participants self-identified as gay, and 3 participants self-identified as bisexual. All teams successfully developed a prototype tool. A total of 4 prototypes were designed as a mini program that could be embedded within a popular Chinese social networking app, and 3 prototypes were designed as stand-alone apps. Common prototype functions included Web-based physician searching based on one’s location (8 prototypes), health education (4 prototypes), Web-based health counseling with providers or lay health volunteers (6 prototypes), appointment scheduling (8 prototypes), and between-user communication (2 prototypes). All prototypes included strategies to ensure privacy protection for MSM users, and some prototypes offered strategies to ensure privacy of physicians. The selected prototypes are undergoing pilot testing. CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrated the feasibility and acceptability of using a hackathon to create mHealth intervention tools. This suggests a different pathway to developing mHealth interventions and could be relevant in other settings.

scholarly journals Identifying Influential Factors in the Discussion Dynamics of Emerging Health Issues on Social Media: Computational Study (Preprint)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lida Safarnejad ◽  
Qian Xu ◽  
Yaorong Ge ◽  
Arunkumar Bagavathi ◽  
Siddharth Krishnan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Time Series ◽  
Real World ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Influential Users

BACKGROUND Social media has become a major resource for observing and understanding public opinions using infodemiology and infoveillance methods, especially during emergencies such as disease outbreaks. For public health agencies, understanding the driving forces of web-based discussions will help deliver more effective and efficient information to general users on social media and the web. OBJECTIVE The study aimed to identify the major contributors that drove overall Zika-related tweeting dynamics during the 2016 epidemic. In total, 3 hypothetical drivers were proposed: (1) the underlying Zika epidemic quantified as a time series of case counts; (2) sporadic but critical real-world events such as the 2016 Rio Olympics and World Health Organization’s Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) announcement, and (3) a few influential users’ tweeting activities. METHODS All tweets and retweets (RTs) containing the keyword Zika posted in 2016 were collected via the Gnip application programming interface (API). We developed an analytical pipeline, EventPeriscope, to identify co-occurring trending events with Zika and quantify the strength of these events. We also retrieved Zika case data and identified the top influencers of the Zika discussion on Twitter. The influence of 3 potential drivers was examined via a multivariate time series analysis, signal processing, a content analysis, and text mining techniques. RESULTS Zika-related tweeting dynamics were not significantly correlated with the underlying Zika epidemic in the United States in any of the four quarters in 2016 nor in the entire year. Instead, peaks of Zika-related tweeting activity were strongly associated with a few critical real-world events, both planned, such as the Rio Olympics, and unplanned, such as the PHEIC announcement. The Rio Olympics was mentioned in >15% of all Zika-related tweets and PHEIC occurred in 27% of Zika-related tweets around their respective peaks. In addition, the overall tweeting dynamics of the top 100 most actively tweeting users on the Zika topic, the top 100 users receiving most RTs, and the top 100 users mentioned were the most highly correlated to and preceded the overall tweeting dynamics, making these groups of users the potential drivers of tweeting dynamics. The top 100 users who retweeted the most were not critical in driving the overall tweeting dynamics. There were very few overlaps among these different groups of potentially influential users. CONCLUSIONS Using our proposed analytical workflow, EventPeriscope, we identified that Zika discussion dynamics on Twitter were decoupled from the actual disease epidemic in the United States but were closely related to and highly influenced by certain sporadic real-world events as well as by a few influential users. This study provided a methodology framework and insights to better understand the driving forces of web-based public discourse during health emergencies. Therefore, health agencies could deliver more effective and efficient web-based communications in emerging crises.

scholarly journals A Men Who Have Sex With Men–Friendly Doctor Finder Hackathon in Guangzhou, China: Development of a Mobile Health Intervention to Enhance Health Care Utilization

10.2196/16030 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. e16030 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunyan Li ◽  
Yuan Xiong ◽  
Hao Fong Sit ◽  
Weiming Tang ◽  
Brian J Hall ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Computer Science ◽  
Mobile Health ◽  
Clinical Medicine ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Mhealth Intervention ◽  
Sex With Men

Background Mobile health (mHeath)–based HIV and sexual health promotion among men who have sex with men (MSM) is feasible in low- and middle-income settings. However, many currently available mHealth tools on the market were developed by the private sector for profit and have limited input from MSM communities. Objective A health hackathon is an intensive contest that brings together participants from multidisciplinary backgrounds to develop a proposed solution for a specific health issue within a short period. The purpose of this paper was to describe a hackathon event that aimed to develop an mHealth tool to enhance health care (specifically HIV prevention) utilization among Chinese MSM, summarize characteristics of the final prototypes, and discuss implications for future mHealth intervention development. Methods The hackathon took place in Guangzhou, China. An open call for hackathon participants was advertised on 3 Chinese social media platforms, including Blued, a popular social networking app among MSM. All applicants completed a Web-based survey and were then scored. The top scoring applicants were grouped into teams based on their skills and content area expertise. Each team was allowed 1 month to prepare for the hackathon. The teams then came together in person with on-site expert mentorship for a 72-hour hackathon contest to develop and present mHealth prototype solutions. The judging panel included experts in psychology, public health, computer science, social media, clinical medicine, and MSM advocacy. The final prototypes were evaluated based on innovation, usability, and feasibility. Results We received 92 applicants, and 38 of them were selected to attend the April 2019 hackathon. A total of 8 teams were formed, including expertise in computer science, user interface design, business or marketing, clinical medicine, and public health. Moreover, 24 participants self-identified as gay, and 3 participants self-identified as bisexual. All teams successfully developed a prototype tool. A total of 4 prototypes were designed as a mini program that could be embedded within a popular Chinese social networking app, and 3 prototypes were designed as stand-alone apps. Common prototype functions included Web-based physician searching based on one’s location (8 prototypes), health education (4 prototypes), Web-based health counseling with providers or lay health volunteers (6 prototypes), appointment scheduling (8 prototypes), and between-user communication (2 prototypes). All prototypes included strategies to ensure privacy protection for MSM users, and some prototypes offered strategies to ensure privacy of physicians. The selected prototypes are undergoing pilot testing. Conclusions This study demonstrated the feasibility and acceptability of using a hackathon to create mHealth intervention tools. This suggests a different pathway to developing mHealth interventions and could be relevant in other settings.

scholarly journals Assessment of the Effectiveness of Identity-Based Public Health Announcements in Increasing the Likelihood of Complying With COVID-19 Guidelines: Randomized Controlled Cross-sectional Web-Based Study

10.2196/25762 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. e25762 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander S Dennis ◽  
Patricia L Moravec ◽  
Antino Kim ◽  
Alan R Dennis
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Data Quality ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Amazon Mechanical Turk ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Identity Based

Background Public health campaigns aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 are important in reducing disease transmission, but traditional information-based campaigns have received unexpectedly extreme backlash. Objective This study aimed to investigate whether customizing of public service announcements (PSAs) providing health guidelines to match individuals’ identities increases their compliance. Methods We conducted a within- and between-subjects, randomized controlled cross-sectional, web-based study in July 2020. Participants viewed two PSAs: one advocating wearing a mask in public settings and one advocating staying at home. The control PSA only provided information, and the treatment PSAs were designed to appeal to the identities held by individuals; that is, either a Christian identity or an economically motivated identity. Participants were asked about their identity and then provided a control PSA and treatment PSA matching their identity, in random order. The PSAs were of approximately 100 words. Results We recruited 300 social media users from Amazon Mechanical Turk in accordance with usual protocols to ensure data quality. In total, 8 failed the data quality checks, and the remaining 292 were included in the analysis. In the identity-based PSA, the source of the PSA was changed, and a phrase of approximately 12 words relevant to the individual’s identity was inserted. A PSA tailored for Christians, when matched with a Christian identity, increased the likelihood of compliance by 12 percentage points. A PSA that focused on economic values, when shown to individuals who identified as economically motivated, increased the likelihood of compliance by 6 points. Conclusions Using social media to deliver COVID-19 public health announcements customized to individuals’ identities is a promising measure to increase compliance with public health guidelines. Trial Registration ISRCTN Registry 22331899; https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN22331899.

scholarly journals Influence of Social Media Platforms on Public Health Protection Against the COVID-19 Pandemic via the Mediating Effects of Public Health Awareness and Behavioral Changes: Integrated Model

10.2196/19996 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. e19996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hani Al-Dmour ◽  
Ra’ed Masa’deh ◽  
Amer Salman ◽  
Mohammad Abuhashesh ◽  
Rand Al-Dmour
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Health Protection ◽  
Behavioral Changes ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Health Awareness ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Public Health Protection

Background Despite the growing body of literature examining social media in health contexts, including public health communication, promotion, and surveillance, limited insight has been provided into how the utility of social media may vary depending on the particular public health objectives governing an intervention. For example, the extent to which social media platforms contribute to enhancing public health awareness and prevention during epidemic disease transmission is currently unknown. Doubtlessly, coronavirus disease (COVID-19) represents a great challenge at the global level, aggressively affecting large cities and public gatherings and thereby having substantial impacts on many health care systems worldwide as a result of its rapid spread. Each country has its capacity and reacts according to its perception of threat, economy, health care policy, and the health care system structure. Furthermore, we noted a lack of research focusing on the role of social media campaigns in public health awareness and public protection against the COVID-19 pandemic in Jordan as a developing country. Objective The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of social media platforms on public health protection against the COVID-19 pandemic via public health awareness and public health behavioral changes as mediating factors in Jordan. Methods A quantitative approach and several social media platforms were used to collect data via web questionnaires in Jordan, and a total of 2555 social media users were sampled. This study used structural equation modeling to analyze and verify the study variables. Results The main findings revealed that the use of social media platforms had a significant positive influence on public health protection against COVID-19 as a pandemic. Public health awareness and public health behavioral changes significantly acted as partial mediators in this relationship. Therefore, a better understanding of the effects of the use of social media interventions on public health protection against COVID-19 while taking public health awareness and behavioral changes into account as mediators should be helpful when developing any health promotion strategy plan. Conclusions Our findings suggest that the use of social media platforms can positively influence awareness of public health behavioral changes and public protection against COVID-19. Public health authorities may use social media platforms as an effective tool to increase public health awareness through dissemination of brief messages to targeted populations. However, more research is needed to validate how social media channels can be used to improve health knowledge and adoption of healthy behaviors in a cross-cultural context.

scholarly journals Assessment of the Effectiveness of Identity-Based Public Health Announcements in Increasing the Likelihood of Complying With COVID-19 Guidelines: Randomized Controlled Cross-sectional Web-Based Study (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander S Dennis ◽  
Patricia L Moravec ◽  
Antino Kim ◽  
Alan R Dennis
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Data Quality ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Amazon Mechanical Turk ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Randomized Controlled ◽  
Identity Based

BACKGROUND Public health campaigns aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 are important in reducing disease transmission, but traditional information-based campaigns have received unexpectedly extreme backlash. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to investigate whether customizing of public service announcements (PSAs) providing health guidelines to match individuals’ identities increases their compliance. METHODS We conducted a within- and between-subjects, randomized controlled cross-sectional, web-based study in July 2020. Participants viewed two PSAs: one advocating wearing a mask in public settings and one advocating staying at home. The control PSA only provided information, and the treatment PSAs were designed to appeal to the identities held by individuals; that is, either a Christian identity or an economically motivated identity. Participants were asked about their identity and then provided a control PSA and treatment PSA matching their identity, in random order. The PSAs were of approximately 100 words. RESULTS We recruited 300 social media users from Amazon Mechanical Turk in accordance with usual protocols to ensure data quality. In total, 8 failed the data quality checks, and the remaining 292 were included in the analysis. In the identity-based PSA, the source of the PSA was changed, and a phrase of approximately 12 words relevant to the individual’s identity was inserted. A PSA tailored for Christians, when matched with a Christian identity, increased the likelihood of compliance by 12 percentage points. A PSA that focused on economic values, when shown to individuals who identified as economically motivated, increased the likelihood of compliance by 6 points. CONCLUSIONS Using social media to deliver COVID-19 public health announcements customized to individuals’ identities is a promising measure to increase compliance with public health guidelines. CLINICALTRIAL ISRCTN Registry 22331899; https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN22331899.

scholarly journals The Role of Social Media in Raising Public Health Awareness during the Pandemic COVID-19: An International Comparative Study

Informatics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
Mohammad Yousef Abuhashesh ◽  
Hani Al-Dmour ◽  
Ra’ed Masa’deh ◽  
Amer Salman ◽  
Rand Al-Dmour ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Behavioral Change ◽  
Health Awareness ◽  
Media Campaigns ◽  
Social Media Platform ◽  
Message Source ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Media Platform

The main objective of this research is to investigate the role of social media campaigns (the type of social media platform, type of message, and message source sender) in raising public health awareness and behavioral change during (COVID-19) as a global pandemic across national selected countries (Poland and Jordan). The research utilizes a quantitative method with an exploratory and descriptive design to accumulate the initial data from a research survey given to the respondents from Jordan and Poland. A total of 1149 web questionnaires were collected from respondents in the two countries (Poland 531 and Jordan 618). In addition, multiple regression analysis was used to test the study hypotheses. The findings showed positive relationships between the components of a social media campaign, public health awareness, and behavioral change during (COVID-19) in the two countries at the same time. However, the preferred type of social media platforms, the message types and type of source sender significantly differ among the respondents due to their countries. This is the first study that examines the role of social media campaigns (the type of social media platform, type of message and message source sender) in public health awareness and behavioral change during (COVID-19) as a global pandemic in across national selected countries (Poland and Jordan).

scholarly journals Identifying Influential Factors in the Discussion Dynamics of Emerging Health Issues on Social Media: Computational Study

10.2196/17175 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. e17175
Author(s):  
Lida Safarnejad ◽  
Qian Xu ◽  
Yaorong Ge ◽  
Arunkumar Bagavathi ◽  
Siddharth Krishnan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Time Series ◽  
Real World ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Influential Users

Background Social media has become a major resource for observing and understanding public opinions using infodemiology and infoveillance methods, especially during emergencies such as disease outbreaks. For public health agencies, understanding the driving forces of web-based discussions will help deliver more effective and efficient information to general users on social media and the web. Objective The study aimed to identify the major contributors that drove overall Zika-related tweeting dynamics during the 2016 epidemic. In total, 3 hypothetical drivers were proposed: (1) the underlying Zika epidemic quantified as a time series of case counts; (2) sporadic but critical real-world events such as the 2016 Rio Olympics and World Health Organization’s Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) announcement, and (3) a few influential users’ tweeting activities. Methods All tweets and retweets (RTs) containing the keyword Zika posted in 2016 were collected via the Gnip application programming interface (API). We developed an analytical pipeline, EventPeriscope, to identify co-occurring trending events with Zika and quantify the strength of these events. We also retrieved Zika case data and identified the top influencers of the Zika discussion on Twitter. The influence of 3 potential drivers was examined via a multivariate time series analysis, signal processing, a content analysis, and text mining techniques. Results Zika-related tweeting dynamics were not significantly correlated with the underlying Zika epidemic in the United States in any of the four quarters in 2016 nor in the entire year. Instead, peaks of Zika-related tweeting activity were strongly associated with a few critical real-world events, both planned, such as the Rio Olympics, and unplanned, such as the PHEIC announcement. The Rio Olympics was mentioned in >15% of all Zika-related tweets and PHEIC occurred in 27% of Zika-related tweets around their respective peaks. In addition, the overall tweeting dynamics of the top 100 most actively tweeting users on the Zika topic, the top 100 users receiving most RTs, and the top 100 users mentioned were the most highly correlated to and preceded the overall tweeting dynamics, making these groups of users the potential drivers of tweeting dynamics. The top 100 users who retweeted the most were not critical in driving the overall tweeting dynamics. There were very few overlaps among these different groups of potentially influential users. Conclusions Using our proposed analytical workflow, EventPeriscope, we identified that Zika discussion dynamics on Twitter were decoupled from the actual disease epidemic in the United States but were closely related to and highly influenced by certain sporadic real-world events as well as by a few influential users. This study provided a methodology framework and insights to better understand the driving forces of web-based public discourse during health emergencies. Therefore, health agencies could deliver more effective and efficient web-based communications in emerging crises.

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