Using Social Media to Engage Knowledge Users in Health Research Priority Setting: Scoping Review

One size fits all: Enhanced zero-shot text classification for patient listening on social media

Patient-focused drug development (PFDD) represents a transformative approach that is reshaping the pharmaceutical landscape by centering on patients throughout the drug development process. Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially in Natural Language Processing (NLP), have enabled the analysis of vast social media datasets, also called Social Media Listening (SML), providing insights not only into patient perspectives but also into those of other interest groups such as caregivers. In this method study, we propose an NLP framework that-given a particular disease-is designed to extract pertinent information related to three primary research topics: identification of interest groups, understanding of challenges, and assessing treatments and support systems. Leveraging external resources like ontologies and employing various NLP techniques, particularly zero-shot text classification, the presented framework yields initial meaningful insights into these research topics with minimal annotation effort.

Confidence in the efficacy of routine vaccines after the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional web-based study

BACKGROUND

There is limited data that assessed the changes in public confidence in routine childhood and adult vaccines after Corona Virus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We, therefore, assessed these changes and the reasons; if any; for these changes and measured the impact of COVID-19 on peoples' thoughts regarding routine vaccinations in Saudi Arabia.

METHODS

We undertook a cross-sectional online study in Saudi Arabia from November 2023 to April 2024. Participation was voluntary for those above 18 years and lived in Saudi Arabia. The study tool was an online self-administered questionnaire. Data gathered were analyzed using the SPSS version 25 software.

RESULTS

A total of 1217 Saudi Arabian participants were enrolled. Among the total participants, only 32.4% (n = 394) participants were males. Most of the participants (55%, n = 679) were from the western region and were married (56.9%, n = 693). Most participants (71%, n = 873) revealed that the routine vaccination plays an important role in protecting them and their children from infectious diseases. The confidence in routine vaccination after the COVID-19 pandemic didn't change among 59% (n = 723), decreased in 22% (n = 261) and increased in 19% (n = 238) of the participants. The most common reason for the change in participants' confidence (68%, n = 743) in routine vaccination after the COVID-19 pandemic was the fear of the impact of COVID-19 vaccine on the immune system or the body's ability to respond correctly to routine vaccines.

CONCLUSIONS

We have showed that there is little change in the confidence of routine vaccination among people in Saudi Arabia compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study could shed light on the potential challenges and opportunities for promoting vaccine acceptance and uptake in a post-pandemic era.

Addressing barriers to global multidisciplinary stakeholder inclusivity: Lessons from global orofacial cleft research priority setting

Background

Inclusivity in research priority setting is fundamental to capturing the opinion of all stakeholders in a research area. Globally, experienced healthcare workers often have deep insights that could impactfully shape future research, and a lack of their involvement in formal research and publications could mean that their voices are insufficiently represented. We aimed to modify the well-established Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI) methodology to address barriers to inclusivity, which are particularly relevant in healthcare that requires highly multidisciplinary care.

Methods

This global research priority-setting exercise for orofacial clefts adapted the CHNRI methodology to include research experts, clinicians from multiple disciplines, and non-technical stakeholders (i.e. patients and parents and non-governmental organisations (NGOs)) on a global basis. A multidisciplinary international steering group proposed and discussed methodological changes to improve inclusivity, including survey edits, subgroups for research questions, a demographics section, translation in French and Spanish, phrasing adaptation, and alternative dissemination techniques.

Results

We received 412 responses and 1420 questions, spanning 78 different countries and 18 different specialties/groups. Challenges remain to improve representation of all groups, with the vast majority of answers (30%) being from surgeons and a comparatively small proportion from patient/parent groups (9%). This also includes managing responses in three languages, effective dissemination, and responses that were not worded as research questions.

Conclusions

This is one of the first CHNRI exercises to involve patients and parents, clinicians, and researchers in its first question submission stage, and the first ever to do so on a global scale. We describe our approach to addressing inclusivity challenges and report related demographic data to serve as a benchmark upon which we hope future CHNRI exercises will improve.

Facilitators and Barriers to the Implementation of a Digital Pain Assessment Tool in Pediatric Oncology Practice: A Qualitative Evaluation of a Quality Improvement Project

Background: Most children and adolescents with cancer experience acute pain, and many experience longer-lasting chronic pain, negatively impacting health-related quality of life and resulting in long-term morbidity. Digital apps can aid in enhancing pain assessment and management by offering children and adolescents with cancer an accessible tool to describe their pain as a multifaceted biopsychosocial construct. Pain Squad is a useable, acceptable, and psychometrically sound multidimensional cancer pain assessment app for children and adolescents with cancer. This project aimed to evaluate the capacity to implement Pain Squad into routine pediatric oncology practice. Method: Nurse champions were asked to prescribe the Pain Squad app to patients over a 6-month implementation period. After the implementation period, we conducted audiorecorded, semistructured interviews with nurse champions to investigate the facilitators and barriers related to nurses' experiences with implementing Pain Squad. Results: The facilitators and barriers to Pain Squad implementation were organized into four overarching Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR)-related themes: (a) characteristics of the Pain Squad app; (b) clinic setting and its context; (c) nurse implementation champions; and (d) the process of implementing Pain Squad into clinical practice. Conclusions: Interviewed nurses believed Pain Squad had the potential to improve child cancer pain care, but barriers to everyday use were evident, described in relation to the internal setting, especially the lack of compatibility between app prescription and current nurse workflows. The use of CFIR to map identified implementation facilitators and barriers can formally support the recognition of factors that may boost the chances of successful uptake.

The reliability and quality of YouTube videos as a source of breath holding spell

BACKGROUND

Breath holding spells (BHS) are an important non-epileptic condition that is common in childhood and causes concern to families. YouTube is a powerful social media tool for accessing diseases and information such as BHS in child health. The aim of the study was to measure of the quality and reliability levels of the videos published in English on BHS uploaded on YouTube.

METHODS

The key words "infant", "cry", "breath holding spells", holding spells" and "breath spells" were searched on the YouTube on November 14, 2022, in this study. Along with the general features of the videos, their quality and reliability were evaluated according to the global quality score (GQS), mDISCERN score.

RESULTS

Fifty-five videos were evaluated. The mDISCERN and GQS scores of the videos in the useful group were higher than those in the misleading group (p < 0.001, p < 0.001). In the useful group, 87.5% of academic institutions and 93.3% of medical doctors (MDs) uploaded high-score GQS videos, while this rate was 16.7% in independent users (p = 0.005). The positive correlation was found between mDISCERN and GQS scores (p < 0.001).

CONCLUSION

The majority of YouTube videos on BHS contained useful information with sufficient quality. Professional associations such as universities and academic institutes need to produce better quality videos to provide families/users with more accurate and up-to-date information about BHS. We emphasize that YouTube should analyse videos published in the field of health, especially in the field of pediatrics, such as BHS, with committees consisting of expert health professionals, and publish them after evaluation. YouTube should consider collaborating with professional pediatrics health organizations such as American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), academic institutes and universities in the field of BHS to produce high-quality videos.

Exploring the use of social media and online methods to engage persons with lived experience and healthcare professionals in creating research agendas: Lessons from a pediatric cancer research priority-setting partnership

Social media is increasingly used to engage persons with lived experience and healthcare professionals in research, however, there remains sparse guidance on how to effectively use social media to engage these groups in research agenda-setting. Here we report our process and experience utilizing a social media campaign to engage Canadians within the pediatric cancer community in a research priority-setting exercise. Following the James Lind Alliance method, we launched a priority-setting partnership (PSP) to develop a child with cancer-, survivor-, family member-, and healthcare professional-based Canadian pediatric cancer research agenda. Social media-based strategies were implemented to recruit participants for two PSP surveys, including preparatory activities, developing a website, launching graphics and advertisements, and engaging internal and external networks. Descriptive statistics of our data and analytics provided by the platforms are used presently to report our process. The framework we implemented involved preparing for social media use, identifying a target audience, developing campaign content, conducting the campaign, refining the campaign as needed, and evaluating its success. Our process resulted in a substantial social media-based reach, good survey completion rates, and a successfully developed pediatric cancer community-specified research agenda. Social media may represent a useful approach to engage persons with lived experience and healthcare professionals in research agenda development. Based on our experience, we present strategies to increase social media campaign engagement that may be useful to those seeking to conduct health research priority-setting exercises.

Users' passivity in accessing digested scientific evidence through social media: cross-sectional insights

OBJECTIVES

This manuscript provides novel insights about the potential use of social media (a Facebook page, the first strategic attempt by EviDent initiative) to share evidence-based dentistry content and empowerment strategies for professionals, using quantifiable usage metrics, besides exposing the strengths and weaknesses of this knowledge translation strategy. One year-long gathered metrics were analyzed to understand information about usage patterns.

RESULTS

Publications were potentially exposed to 4784 users, and subsequent interaction with the page occurred in 18% of cases. Users' involvement with page content was associated with the number of page visitors (P = .005). However, users' interaction with the page was not associated with the potential number of users that could have seen the page (P = .25). Even considering the users that approved the posts, only 7%, on average, interacted with the post's links. Although social media has effectively disseminated scientific content, our experience revealed the user's passivity in interacting with the content. We expect to overcome these barriers by developing a mobile app to offer a more interactive and dynamic interface associated with a more attractive format for posting, including images and infographics.