A Tool for Quantifying the Quality of Online Health Information on Student Health Center Websites (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The Internet has become a major source of health information especially for adolescents and young adults. Unfortunately, inaccurate, incomplete or outdated health information is widespread online. Often adolescents and young adults turn to authoritative websites such as the student health center (SHC) website of the university they are attending to obtain reliable health information. Although most on-campus SHC clinics comply with the American College Health Association (ACHA) standards, their websites are not subject to any standards or code of conduct. In the absence of quality standards or guidelines, the monitoring and compliance processes do not exist for SHC websites either. As such, there is no oversight on the health information published on the SHC websites by any central governing body. OBJECTIVE Our objective is to enable researchers to monitor online information quality at scale. We have created a tool that can efficiently quantify the quality of information posted on SHC websites about a health topic. Specifically, this quantitative tool provides information on quality, such as reading ease, coverage of the topic, and the degree of fact-based objective information. METHODS Our cross-functional team has designed and developed an open-source software, QMOHI: Quantitative Measures of Online Health Information, using the Agile software development methodology. The QMOHI tool finds the SHC website and gathers information on the specific health topic of interest from a prespecified list of university websites. Based on the retrieved text, the tool computes eight different quality metrics. The QMOHI tool is a fully automated tool that is designed to be scalable, generalizable, and robust. RESULTS The first empirical evaluation shows that the QMOHI tool is highly scalable and substantially more efficient than the manual approach of assessing online information quality. The second experimental results demonstrate QMOHI’s ability to work effectively with starkly different health topics (COVID, Cancer, LARC, and Condom) and with narrowly focused topics (hormonal IUD and copper IUD); thereby establishing the generalizability and versatility of the tool. The results from the last experiment demonstrate that QMOHI is not vulnerable to typical structural changes that SHC websites may undergo (e.g. URL changes) over a long period of time. QMOHI is able to support longitudinal studies by being robust to such website changes. CONCLUSIONS QMOHI allows public health researchers and practitioners to conduct large-scale studies of SHC websites that were previously too time intensive. The capability to generalize broadly or focus narrowly allows for wide applications of QMOHI, equipping researchers to study both mainstream and underexplored health topics. QMOHI’s ability to robustly analyze SHC websites periodically facilitates longitudinal investigations and monitor SHC progress. QMOHI serves as a launching pad for our future work that aims to develop a broadly applicable public health tool for online health information studies with potential applications far beyond SHC websites.

Disparities in information on Long-Acting Reversible Contraceptives available to college students on student health center websites in USA

Long Acting Reversible Contraceptive (LARC) methods are among the most effective birth control approaches for adolescent and young adults yet information on these methods is not widespread. We examine LARC information provided by Student Health Centers (SHC) websites from Universities across the USA to document disparities in access to information on these important contraception methods for college students. We find that compared to EC, Condoms, (plus Pap smear as control), LARC is mentioned less frequently than the others and 73% of schools have no LARC content on their SHC websites. There is no standardization in how the sexual and reproductive health information is organized on SHC websites, which might hinder access. When LARC information does exist, readability and accessibility vary. Universities having high rates of the student body who are African American or female are less likely to provide LARC information on their SHC website and universities situated in more rural settings are less likely to post LARC information on their websites.

2531. Using Peer-to-Peer Education to Increase Awareness and Uptake of HPV Vaccine Among Chinese International Students

Background There are more than one million international college students in the United States. The University of Southern California hosts about 5,000 Chinese International Students (CIS). HPV-related cancers are common in China and the HPV vaccine was only recently introduced to the Chinese population. CIS in the United States have low HPV vaccination rates upon arrival. Once these students become aware of the affordability and the accessibility of the vaccine, they often contact a provider to start the vaccination series. The HPV vaccine is available to all eligible students at the USC student health center and is free of charge to students with Aetna Student Health Insurance. We examined the impact of a peer-to-peer education program about HPV disease and vaccination amongst CIS and assessed the impact of the program via an analysis of HPV immunization rates amongst CIS. Methods The study was IRB approved. Mandarin-speaking USC students volunteered to serve as peer educators in response to an inquiry from academic advisors. 18 CIS were trained by MiOra as Immunization Community Health Educators (ICHE) on HPV disease and vaccination as well as sexually transmitted infections and prevention. CIS educated peers at tables set up throughout USC. Results Initial data from 100 CIS students who were surveyed and educated in April 2019 were analyzed. 59 out of 99 (59.6%) students reported that they have either received or are in the process of receiving the HPV vaccine. 93 out of 99 (93.9%) indicated “no knowledge” or “some knowledge” about HPV and HPV vaccine while only 6 students (6.1%) reported “a great deal of knowledge.” 56 out of 99 (56.6%) thought that it is “unlikely” or “impossible” for them to acquire HPV. 92 out of 97 (94.9%) said they would be interested in getting vaccinated if it were free. Conclusion Many CIS have limited understanding of HPV risk factors and HPV vaccine; however, when informed, the majority of students indicated they would likely vaccinate if it was covered by insurance. Peer-to-peer education was very effective. Of the first 400 students educated, 80 visited the student health center. This is an ongoing project. We will continue to collect and report data on the impact of the peer-to-peer education and factors influencing. Disclosures All authors: No reported disclosures.