Hugh Jackman vs. Skin Cancer Awareness Month: Promoting Public Interest in Basal Cell Carcinoma (Preprint)
BACKGROUND Public awareness for BCC is particularly important, as its major risk factors — increased sun exposure and number of sunburns — are largely preventable. OBJECTIVE Determine whether social media posts from celebrities has an affect on public awareness of basal cell carcinoma. METHODS We used Google Trends to investigate whether public awareness for basal cell carcinoma (BCC) increased following social media posts from Hugh Jackman. To forecast the expected search interest for BCC, melanoma and sunscreen in the event that each celebrity had not posted on social media, we used the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) algorithm. RESULTS We found that social media posts from Hugh Jackman, a well-known actor, increased relative search interest above the expected search interest calculated using an ARIMA forecasting model. CONCLUSIONS Our results also suggest that increasing awareness by Skin Cancer Awareness Month may be less effective for BCC, but a celebrity spokesperson has the potential to increase awareness. BCC is largely preventable, so increasing awareness could lead to a decrease in incidence.