A data-driven social network intervention for improving organ donation awareness among minorities: analysis and optimization of a cross-sectional study

Murphy, MD; Pinheiro, D; Iyengar, R; et al.Lim, G; Menezes, R; Cadeiras, M
Date: 14 January 2020
Journal
Journal of Medical Internet Research
Publisher
JMIR Publications
Publisher DOI
https://doi.org/10.2196/14605
Abstract
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 ...
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; P<.001) such that 10 additional organ-related tweets are associated with a 3.20% (33,933/1,060,403) increase in the number of organ donor registrations at the city level. In addition, our SNI on Facebook effectively reached 1 million users, and the use of optimization significantly increased the rate of clicks per impression (beta=.0213; P<.004). 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.
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Computer Science

Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy

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©Michael Douglas Murphy, Diego Pinheiro, Rahul Iyengar, Gene Lim, Ronaldo Menezes, Martin Cadeiras. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
Except where otherwise noted, this item's licence is described as ©Michael Douglas Murphy, Diego Pinheiro, Rahul Iyengar, Gene Lim, Ronaldo Menezes, Martin Cadeiras. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.