Global public health implications of social media engagement from a virtual education platform to combat oncology misinformation.

Abstract

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]