TY - JOUR
T1 - Leveraging big data to improve health awareness campaigns
T2 - A novel evaluation of the great American smokeout
AU - Ayers, John W.
AU - Westmaas, J. Lee
AU - Leas, Eric C.
AU - Benton, Adrian
AU - Chen, Yunqi
AU - Dredze, Mark
AU - Althouse, Benjamin M.
N1 - Funding Information:
We wish to thank Nick Generous for helping obtain the Wikipedia access log data, and providing expert advice on the analysis of these data. We also thank Omar Kordahi and Mary Kokstis at Alere Wellbeing, Inc. for providing aggregated quitline call volume data. We thank Keith Schnakenberg for helpful advice on data modeling. Some of the research reported in this publication for Google searches was informed by work supported by RCA173299A from the National Cancer Institute and FDA Center for Tobacco Products (CTP). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the official views of the American Cancer Society, National Institutes of Health, or the Food and Drug Administration. The funders had no role in the design, conduct, or interpretation of the study nor in the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© John W Ayers, J Lee Westmaas, Eric C Leas, Adrian Benton, Yunqi Chen, Mark Dredze, Benjamin M Althouse. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (http://publichealth.jmir.org), 31.03.2016. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://publichealth.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
PY - 2016/1
Y1 - 2016/1
N2 - Background: Awareness campaigns are ubiquitous, but little is known about their potential effectiveness because traditional evaluations are often unfeasible. For 40 years, the “Great American Smokeout” (GASO) has encouraged media coverage and popular engagement with smoking cessation on the third Thursday of November as the nation's longest running awareness campaign. Objective: We proposed a novel evaluation framework for assessing awareness campaigns using the GASO as a case study by observing cessation-related news reports and Twitter postings, and cessation-related help seeking via Google, Wikipedia, and government-sponsored quitlines. Methods: Time trends (2009-2014) were analyzed using a quasi-experimental design to isolate spikes during the GASO by comparing observed outcomes on the GASO day with the simulated counterfactual had the GASO not occurred. Results: Cessation-related news typically increased by 61% (95% CI 35-87) and tweets by 13% (95% CI −21 to 48) during the GASO compared with what was expected had the GASO not occurred. Cessation-related Google searches increased by 25% (95% CI 10-40), Wikipedia page visits by 22% (95% CI −26 to 67), and quitline calls by 42% (95% CI 19-64). Cessation-related news media positively coincided with cessation tweets, Internet searches, and Wikipedia visits; for example, a 50% increase in news for any year predicted a 28% (95% CI −2 to 59) increase in tweets for the same year. Increases on the day of the GASO rivaled about two-thirds of a typical New Year's Day-the day that is assumed to see the greatest increases in cessation-related activity. In practical terms, there were about 61,000 more instances of help seeking on Google, Wikipedia, or quitlines on GASO each year than would normally be expected. Conclusions: These findings provide actionable intelligence to improve the GASO and model how to rapidly, cost-effectively, and efficiently evaluate hundreds of awareness campaigns, nearly all for the first time.
AB - Background: Awareness campaigns are ubiquitous, but little is known about their potential effectiveness because traditional evaluations are often unfeasible. For 40 years, the “Great American Smokeout” (GASO) has encouraged media coverage and popular engagement with smoking cessation on the third Thursday of November as the nation's longest running awareness campaign. Objective: We proposed a novel evaluation framework for assessing awareness campaigns using the GASO as a case study by observing cessation-related news reports and Twitter postings, and cessation-related help seeking via Google, Wikipedia, and government-sponsored quitlines. Methods: Time trends (2009-2014) were analyzed using a quasi-experimental design to isolate spikes during the GASO by comparing observed outcomes on the GASO day with the simulated counterfactual had the GASO not occurred. Results: Cessation-related news typically increased by 61% (95% CI 35-87) and tweets by 13% (95% CI −21 to 48) during the GASO compared with what was expected had the GASO not occurred. Cessation-related Google searches increased by 25% (95% CI 10-40), Wikipedia page visits by 22% (95% CI −26 to 67), and quitline calls by 42% (95% CI 19-64). Cessation-related news media positively coincided with cessation tweets, Internet searches, and Wikipedia visits; for example, a 50% increase in news for any year predicted a 28% (95% CI −2 to 59) increase in tweets for the same year. Increases on the day of the GASO rivaled about two-thirds of a typical New Year's Day-the day that is assumed to see the greatest increases in cessation-related activity. In practical terms, there were about 61,000 more instances of help seeking on Google, Wikipedia, or quitlines on GASO each year than would normally be expected. Conclusions: These findings provide actionable intelligence to improve the GASO and model how to rapidly, cost-effectively, and efficiently evaluate hundreds of awareness campaigns, nearly all for the first time.
KW - Big data
KW - Evaluation
KW - Health communication
KW - Infodemiology
KW - Infoveillence
KW - Mass media
KW - Smoking cessation
KW - Social media
KW - Tobacco control
KW - Twitter
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U2 - 10.2196/publichealth.5304
DO - 10.2196/publichealth.5304
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:84982158253
SN - 2369-2960
VL - 2
JO - JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
JF - JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
IS - 1
M1 - e16
ER -