132 Background: Social media has emerged as a powerful vehicle for the dissemination of medical information, especially in resource-limited regions, due to its mass global reach. However, 1/3 of social media posts contain misinformation with 76.9% of them containing harmful information leading to adverse outcomes that are a detriment to global public health. To address this, MedNews Week (MNW), a free, digital medical education platform dedicated to combating healthcare misinformation, was developed to contribute to global oncology education through biweekly programming. Its main show, Keynote Conference, features live virtual presentations from oncology’s premier global leaders discussing the latest developments in cancer before a mainstream global audience. The aim of this study was to assess the worldwide reach and impact of this cost-free, virtual oncology education platform. Methods: From January 2022 to 2023, MNW hosted 25 global oncology leaders as Keynote Speakers (Mean H-index=50.09). Viewership, impressions, and outreach data were collected from MNW’s social media accounts and TweepMaps. Data was analyzed to assess MNW’s global reach and engagement and stratified based on engagement sentiment, gender, age group, and occupation. Results: During this period, MNW generated a Healthcare Social Graph Score of 92.77% (top 7.33 percentile of global healthcare influencers) with over 109,128 Twitter impressions and 4,731 engagements reaching 1.9 million accounts globally over 12 months (Table). Most of the followers were from non-healthcare fields with slightly more males than females. Those who engaged conveyed positive sentiments (59.9% likes and 26.2% mentions) contributing to a viewership increase from 72,136 (6 months) to 157,559 (1 year). The platform reached 100 cities and 57 countries of which 16 were of low-to-middle socioeconomic (SE) status. Conclusions: MNW has demonstrated an ability to attract and sustain a diverse, global, growing audience. Given MNW’s continued growth, it provides an innovative model to engage and disseminate medical information to mainstream audiences. The platform’s ability to showcase global leaders to mainstream audiences gratuitously, especially in lower SE regions that have been historically underserved, offers a practical approach to combat educational inequity. Thus, MNW represents a novel approach with promising potential to positively impact global oncology education.[Table: see text]
139 Background: While the popularity of social media has grown as a source of healthcare news, studies have shown that one third of social media posts contain misinformation with 76.9% of them containing harmful information leading to adverse outcomes. As a result, MedNews Week (MNW), a digital platform dedicated to combating misinformation, was developed to contribute to global oncology education through its free programming. In its first year, MNW has connected 193,000 live viewers from 57 countries with opportunities to learn from and engage live with oncology’s global leaders during their Keynote Lectures. The goal of this study was to assess whether Twitter Impressions, LinkedIn Impressions and Speaker H-Index significantly predicted the number of live attendees at Keynote Lectures as a marker for the utilization of medical information resources by a global network of patients and patient advocates. Methods: In 2022, MNW hosted 32 distinguished physician-researchers as Keynote Speakers for live streamed virtual lectures of which 25 spoke on oncology topics. Twitter and LinkedIn promotional posts for each Keynote Lecture began one week before every event and the number of impressions were collected. The number of virtual attendees at each live lecture and speaker h-index (a common metric of scholarly impact) were recorded for each lecturer for statistical testing. Multiple linear regression was performed using R. Results: Results showed that the overall regression was statistically significant (R2 = 0.9977, F(3, 18) = 2650, p-value < 0.001). Twitter and LinkedIn Impressions significantly predicted the number of live attendees at Keynote Lectures (p-value < 0.001). However, the speaker H-index did not significantly predict the number of live Keynote attendees (p-value = 0.258 > 0.05). Conclusions: There is very strong evidence to support social media engagement as a predictor of health resource utilization as evident by Keynote Lecture attendance. However, a speaker’s H-index was not found to be a good predictor of health resource utilization by patients and patient advocates. The results of this analysis highlight the importance of traditional resources of medical knowledge adapting to the current digital climate, as platforms like MNW and COSMO demonstrate the growing impact of social media as an outlet for patient education and outreach – particularly in underserved regions globally.[Table: see text]
11019 Background: Social media has emerged as a powerful outlet for the dissemination of medical information, especially in resource-limited regions, due to its mass global reach. However, misinformation has presented an unexpected detriment to public health on a global scale. To address this, MedNews Week (MNW), a free, virtual educational platform streamed on most social media platforms was developed to provide global oncology education through biweekly programming. Its leading show, Keynote Conference, features live virtual presentations from oncology’s premier global leaders discussing the latest developments in the field before a mainstream global audience. The aim of this study was to assess the worldwide reach and impact of this cost-free, virtual oncology education platform. Methods: From January 2022 to February 2023, MNW hosted 33 global leaders as Keynote Speakers discussing the latest developments in oncology. Viewership, impressions, and outreach data were collected from MNW’s social media accounts and Tweepmaps. Data was analyzed to assess MNW’s global reach and engagement and stratified based on engagement sentiment, gender, age group, and occupation. Results: During this period, MNW produced a healthcare social grasp score of 64% and generated over 64,000 Twitter impressions engaging 1.9 million viewers over 13 months in the US, UK, Ireland, India, France, and 16 lower socioeconomic (SE) countries and 99 cities. Most of the followers were from non-healthcare fields with more males than females (Table). Those who engaged conveyed positive sentiments (64%) contributing to a viewership increase from 47,589 (6 months) to 61,539 (1 year), where 60% of the audience was found to originate from lower SE regions globally. Conclusions: MNW has demonstrated an ability to attract and sustain a diverse, global, growing mainstream audience. Given MNW’s continued growth, it provides a proof-of-concept model to engage and disseminate medical information to mainstream audiences. The platform’s ability to showcase global leaders to mainstream audiences gratuitously, especially in lower SE regions that have been historically underserved, offers a practical approach to combat educational inequity. Consequently, such a platform has demonstrated great potential to positively impact global oncology education. Demographics of MedNews Week’s audience. [Table: see text]
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.