Participation in social media platform and being a recipient of tailored health messages improve the knowledge and awareness of Human papillomavirus(HPV) infection and cervical cancer.
Lyson and team have conducted a study to investigate whether participating in social media platform and receiving brief tailored messages is effective in improving the knowledge, awareness, and prevention behavior towards HPV and cervical cancer.
The study recruited 782 participants. The participants were consecutively assigned to nine-person groups on a social media platform. The baseline knowledge, awareness, and prevention behavior of the participants with regards to HPV and cervical cancer were already noted. Each participant receiveda unique random set of 20 tailored messages daily for up to five days. Post-survey was done to assess the knowledge, awareness, and prevention behavior of the participants.
Significant statistical difference was not seen with regards to knowledge and prevention behavior of the participants from the baseline to post-survey. But, a significant change in response to whether the participant has heard about HPV was increased to some extent. The study findings also revealed that most of the participants had basic knowledge, awareness, and positive behavior related to the prevention of cervical cancer from the beginning of the study.
The study concluded that social media platforms could be of great help in improving knowledge, awareness, and prevention towards HPV and cervical cancer. However, further research should be done to determine how social media improves the healthy behavior of an individual in cervical cancer.
Reference:
Lyson HC, Le GM, Zhang J, Rivadeneira N, Lyles C, Radcliffe K, Pasick RJ, Sawaya G, Sarkar U, Centola D. Social Media as a Tool to Promote HealthAwareness: Results from an Online Cervical Cancer Prevention Study. J CancerEduc. 2019 Aug;34(4):819-822.