Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: May 16, 2019
Date Accepted: Nov 12, 2019
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
A Data-Driven Social Network Intervention for Improving Organ Donation Awareness Among Minorities: Analysis and Optimization of a Cross-Sectional Study
Background:
Increasing the number of organ donors may enhance organ transplantation, and past health interventions have shown the potential to generate both large-scale and sustainable changes, particularly among minorities.
Objective:
This study aimed to propose a conceptual data-driven framework that tracks digital markers of public organ donation awareness using Twitter and delivers an optimized social network intervention (SNI) to targeted audiences using Facebook.
Methods:
We monitored digital markers of organ donation awareness across the United States over a 1-year period using Twitter and examined their association with organ donation registration. We delivered this SNI on Facebook with and without optimized awareness content (ie, educational content with a weblink to an online donor registration website) to low-income Hispanics in Los Angeles over a 1-month period and measured the daily number of impressions (ie, exposure to information) and clicks (ie, engagement) among the target audience.
Results:
Digital markers of organ donation awareness on Twitter are associated with donation registration (beta=.0032;
Conclusions:
Our framework can provide a real-time characterization of organ donation awareness while effectively delivering tailored interventions to minority communities. It can complement past approaches to create large-scale, sustainable interventions that are capable of raising awareness and effectively mitigate disparities in organ donation.
Citation
