Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Dec 28, 2022
Date Accepted: Dec 10, 2023
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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 Large Scale Examination of Digital Textual Messages on Uptake Rates of Medical Checkups
ABSTRACT
Background:
Textual messages are often used by healthcare authorities in order to increase compliance rates with medical recommendations. The effectiveness of different types of message framings have been examined over the past three decades. This study makes use of a large digital campaign held by Maccabi Healthcare Services (MHS), the second largest Health Maintenance Organization in Israel, to examine the effect of commonly-used message framings on uptake rates of medical checkups. It also examines the effectiveness of media channel on uptake rates and whether subject-line length is correlated with message opening rates.
Objective:
Examine the effectiveness of some of the most widely-used message framings on uptake rates of medical checkups.
Methods:
We conducted a large scale field study (n = 113,048) together with Maccabi Healthcare Services (MHS), the second largest Health Maintenance Organization in Israel. The study made use of a massive digital reach out campaign held in 20202021. Members aged 50-74 were invited to take their recommended medical actions from the following list: HPV, mammography, abdominal aortic aneurysm, fecal occult blood test and pneumococcal vaccination. Each member was randomly assigned to receive one of six types of messages: Control, positive outcomes, negative outcomes, physician recommendation, implementation intentions, and empowerment.
Results:
No significant effect of message framing on uptake rates was found. We identify two suggestive findings: (1) shorter subject lines are positively correlated with opening rates, and (2) emails outperform text messages.
Conclusions:
No evidence was found for an effect of the above frames on uptake rates. In order to increase compliance rates, public health officials should consider alternative framings. In addition, media channels and subject line length should be given careful thought. Clinical Trial: The study was pre-registered on the AEA RCT Registry. Unique identifying number: AEARCTR-0006317.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.