The Science of Health Economics and Employee Wellness Programs
The Danger of Social Media Performance Fads
Are Patients With Cancer Less Willing to Share Their Health Information? Privacy, Sensitivity, and Social Purpose
David Grande, David Asch, Fei Wan, Angela Bradbury, Reshma Jagsi, Nandita Mitra
In the Journal of Oncology Practice, David Grande and colleagues, including David Asch and Nandita Mitra, assess patient views on use of health information to build population cancer databases for research and care delivery. Participants with and without cancer were randomly assigned to rate scenarios based on their willingness to share their electronic health information in each scenario. The research finds that participants with and without cancer had a similar willingness to share health information. Both patient groups identified the purpose of information use as the most...
Can Philadelphia Reduce its Number of Uninsured?
President Obama has challenged 20 cities to decrease the number of uninsured people who have not yet signed up for insurance on the Healthcare.gov Marketplace. Timed with the start of the Marketplace’s third open enrollment period on November 1, the Healthy Communities Challenge pits 20 cities against each other to win bragging rights and a visit from him.
Use of Mobile Apps: A Patient‐centered Approach
Lauren VonHoltz, Kendra Houdek, Brendan Carr, Frances Shofer, Flaura Winston, C. William Hanson, Raina Merchant.
In Academic Emergency Medicine, Lauren VonHoltz and colleagues, including Raina Merchant and Flaura Winston, surveyed 300 Emergency Department patients to explore their use of smartphone health applications (apps). Of 300 participants, 212 (71%) owned smartphones, 201 (95%) had apps, and 94 (44%) had health apps. The most frequently downloaded health apps focused on exercise, brain teasers or diet. Only 2% of the health apps were recommended to patients by their health care provider. Patients used their health apps intermittently, with 55% of apps used once a month or less. They...
Linking social media and medical record data: a study of adults presenting to an academic, urban emergency department
Kevin A Padrez, Lyle Ungar, Hansen Schwartz, Robert J Smith, Shawndra Hill, Tadas Antanavicius, Dana Brown, Patrick Crutchley, David Asch, Raina Merchant
In BMJ Quality and Safety, Kevin Padrez and colleagues, including David Asch and Raina Merchant, explore the acceptability to patients and potential utility to researchers of a database linking patients’ social media content with their electronic medical record (EMR) data. The authors approached adult Facebook/Twitter users who presented to an emergency department. Many patients were willing to share and link their social media data with EMR data. Patients that shared their social media data were younger, more likely to post at least once a day, and more likely to present to the...
Study Links Health-Related Social Media Chatter With Individual EMRs
What do patients say about emergency departments in online reviews? A qualitative study
Austin S. Kilaru, Zachary F. Meisel, Breah Paciotti, Yoonhee P. Ha, Robert J. Smith, Benjamin L. Ranard, Raina M. Merchant
In BMJ Quality and Safety, Austin Kilaru and colleagues, including Zachary Meisel and Raina Merchant, seek to better understand how patients’ use of web-based tools to reflect on their health care experiences compares with in-patient surveys. They analyzed online reviews for U.S. emergency departments (EDs) posted on the consumer ratings website Yelp. The authors collected reviews describing experiences of ED care for a random sample of 100 U.S. hospitals. They analyzed the content of the reviews against themes from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and...
Kevin Volpp Wins NIH Award for Behavioral Research
Social Media & Innovation Lab Gets $668,000 NIH Twitter Study Grant
How New Apple System May Change Clinical Trial Management
The Twitter Opportunities Most Researchers Are Missing
Hidden in Plain Sight: A Crowdsourced Public Art Contest to Make Automated External Defibrillators More Visible
Raina Merchant, Heather Griffis, Yoonhee Ha, Austin Kilaru, Allison Sellers, John Hershey, Shawndra Hill, Emily Kramer-Golinkoff, Lindsay Nadkarni, Margaret Debski, Kevin Padrez, Lance Becker, David Asch
Raina Merchant and colleagues want to raise awareness about automated external defibrillators (AEDs) and use artwork to make AED locations more memorable. In a recent article in the American Journal of Public Health, Merchant et al use an online crowdsourcing design contest -- the Defibrillator Design Challenge -- to engage the public to this end. The goal of the project was not to install designs submitted as part of the contest, but to test whether the public would create them, vote on them, and share them. It is a follow-up to...
Twitter sentiments and ACA enrollment
Twitter, as an indicator of public sentiment, has great potential in health research. A recent study linked Twitter negativity with rates of heart disease mortality on a county level; a new study links Twitter sentiments with state rates of enrollment on the ACA health insurance marketplaces in the first open enrollment period.
Psychological Language on Twitter Predicts County-Level Heart Disease Mortality
Johannes C. Eichstaedt, Hansen Andrew Schwartz, Margaret L. Kern, Gregory Park, Darwin R. Labarthe, Raina M. Merchant, Sneha Jha, Megha Agrawal, Lukasz A. Dziurzynski, Maarten Sap, Christopher Weeg, Emily E. Larson, Lyle H. Ungar, Martin E. P. Seligman
In the journal Psychological Science, Johannes C. Eichstaedt and colleagues, including Raina Merchant, analyze Twitter language to look for correlation with community-level mortality from atherosclerotic heart disease (AHD). Using a ‘social media language model’, a cross-sectional regression, they find statistically significant relationships between negative sentiment and higher mortality – and protective effects of positive sentiment. Most of the relationships remain significant after controlling for income and education. The authors posit that their model predicts AHD mortality...