Systematic Review on Information Technology Approaches to Evaluate the Impact of Public Health Campaigns: Real Cases and Possible Directions

Evaluating the success of a public health campaign is critical. It helps policy makers to improve prevention strategies and close existing gaps. For instance, Brazil's “Syphilis No!” campaign reached many people, but how do we analyze its real impact on population awareness? Are epidemiologic variables sufficient? This study examined literature on using of information technology approaches to analyze the impact of public health campaigns. We began the systematic review with 276 papers and narrowed it down to 17, which analyzed campaigns. In addition to epidemiological variables, other types of variables of interest included: level of (i) access to the campaign website, (ii) subject knowledge and awareness, based on questionnaires, (iii) target population's interest, measured from both online search engine and engagement with Social Network Service, and (iv) campaign exposure through advertising, using data from television commercials. Furthermore, we evaluated the impact by considering several dimensions such as: communication, epidemiology, and policy enforcement. Our findings provide researchers with an overview of various dimensions, and variables-of-interest, for measuring public campaign impact, and examples of how and which campaigns have used them.

Applying Salutogenesis in Community-Wide Mental Health Promotion

This chapter highlights the relevance of mental health as a resource and risk for population health and describes mental health problems and related financial and social implications for society, which has led to an increased focus on prevention of mental health problems in health policy lately. Using the river metaphor of salutogenesis and a mental health ease–disease continuum, mental health is seen not as a stable trait but rather as a constant process, which needs to be protected and promoted. Thus, mental health promotion is foremost focused on protective factors and promoting mental health resources at different levels of society and is relevant to everyone.The authors also present and describe the ‘Act-Belong-Commit’/‘ABCs of Mental Health’ Campaign, a world-first comprehensive, population-wide, community-based mental health promotion campaign designed to promote mental health and prevent mental ill health.

“Mo” Together or Alone? Investigating the Role of Fundraisers’ Networks in Online Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

In online peer-to-peer fundraising, individual fundraisers, acting on behalf of nonprofit organizations, mobilize their social networks using social media to request donations. Whereas existing studies focus on networks of donors to explain success, we examine the role of the networks of fundraisers and their effect on fundraising outcomes. By drawing on social capital and network theories, we investigate how social capital derived from social media networks and fundraising groups explains individual fundraising success. Using the Movember health campaign on Twitter as an empirical context, we find that fundraising success is associated with a moderate level of centrality in social media networks and moderate group network size. In addition, we find that fundraisers interact only marginally on social media but prefer to connect with each other outside these platforms and engage in group fundraising. Our article contributes to research on fundraising and social networks and provides recommendations for practice.

Hepatitis a Vaccine Promotion Using Facebook Ads to Reach At-Risk Groups

Purpose To evaluate using Facebook ads to promote hepatitis A vaccination to at-risk groups. Design This descriptive research study used Facebook ads and posts to deliver a social media health campaign. Setting The social networking site Facebook was used to target audiences in the United States. Subjects Adults in the United States with Facebook accounts were the general audience with at-risk audiences having interests or profile attributes in either LGBTQ or food service groups. Measures Facebook Ads Manager was used to determine impressions, engagement rates, link clicks, and cost per result of the ads. These metrics were measured to examine the use of Facebook ads and targeting audiences. Analysis Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and the Pearson correlation coefficient analysis was used to determine if the amount spent on each ad had any correlation with reach, results, cost per result, or impressions. Results The campaign resulted in a reach of 53 422 users, 70 542 impressions, 457 unique link clicks (483 link clicks), an average cost per results of $0.92 USD, and the total amount spent of $445.68 USD. The amount spent was positively correlated with reach (r = .969), results (r = .994), cost per result (r = .841), and impressions (r =.957). Conclusion The social media health campaign was effective in reaching an audience about hepatitis A vaccination. Using interest groups was not more cost-effective than a using a general audience for link clicks.

Developing an Evidence-Based Coexistence Strategy to Promote Human and Wildlife Health in a Biodiverse Agroforest Landscape

Agroforest mosaics represent one of the most extensive human-impacted terrestrial systems worldwide and play an increasingly critical role in wildlife conservation. In such dynamic shared landscapes, coexistence can be compromised if people view wildlife as a source of infectious disease. A cross-disciplinary One Health knowledge base can help to identify evolving proponents and threats to sustainable coexistence and establish long-term project goals. Building on an existing knowledge base of human–wildlife interactions at Cantanhez National Park (NP), Guinea-Bissau, we developed a causal pathway Theory-of-Change approach in response to a newly identified disease threat of leprosy in the Critically Endangered western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus). The goals of our project are to improve knowledge and surveillance of leprosy in humans and wildlife and increase capacity to manage human–wildlife interactions. We describe the core project activities that aim to (1) quantify space use by chimpanzees across Cantanhez NP and determine the distribution of leprosy in chimpanzees; (2) understand the health system and local perceptions of disease; and (3) identify fine-scale risk sites through participatory mapping of resources shared by humans and chimpanzees across target villages. We discuss the development of a biodiversity and health monitoring programme, an evidence-based One Health campaign, and a One Health environmental management plan that incorporates the sharing of space and resources, and the disease implications of human–non-human great ape interactions. We demonstrate the importance of multi-stakeholder engagement, and the development of strategy that fully considers interactions between people, wildlife, and the environment.

Maximizing Completion of the Two-Dose COVID-19 Vaccine Series with Aid from Infographics

Two of the three COVID-19 vaccines approved in the United States require two doses to reach full efficacy, as do others available elsewhere in the world. The complete series of multidose COVID-19 vaccines offers stronger protection against infection by SARS-CoV-2 compared to single-dose injections with the same vaccines. Achieving perfect community-level adherence is a challenge in any public health campaign, even in non-pandemic times. Vaccines requiring multiple doses combined with a surge of vaccine hesitancy and misinformation that has been witnessed by the public during the COVID-19 pandemic are exacerbating the challenge of ensuring the world’s population achieves a sufficient level of immunity against COVID-19. Here, we describe the results of our study in which we sought to determine whether completion of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine regimen could be improved by disseminating infographics that explain what the vaccine is and why returning for the second dose is beneficial. Our results show that the proportion of COVID-19 vaccine recipients returning for a second inoculation grew after COVID-19 vaccine infographics were distributed to first-time vaccine recipients. We suggest that extending communication and outreach initiatives into the clinic positively influences the rate of follow-up visits, and that infographics are useful tools to aid and bolster the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines.