Journal of medical Internet research
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J. Med. Internet Res. · Jan 2021
Digital Health Literacy and Web-Based Information-Seeking Behaviors of University Students in Germany During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cross-sectional Survey Study.
Digital communication technologies are playing an important role in the health communication strategies of governments and public health authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The internet and social media have become important sources of health-related information on COVID-19 and on protective behaviors. In addition, the COVID-19 infodemic is spreading faster than the coronavirus itself, which interferes with governmental health-related communication efforts. This jeopardizes national public health containment strategies. Therefore, digital health literacy is a key competence to navigate web-based COVID-19-related information and service environments. ⋯ Although digital health literacy is well developed in university students, a significant proportion of students still face difficulties with certain abilities to evaluate information. There is a need to strengthen the digital health literacy capacities of university students using tailored interventions. Improving the quality of health-related information on the internet is also key.
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J. Med. Internet Res. · Jan 2021
Unfolding the Determinants of COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance in China.
China is at the forefront of global efforts to develop COVID-19 vaccines and has five fast-tracked candidates at the final-stage, large-scale human clinical trials testing phase. Vaccine-promoting policymaking for public engagement is a prerequisite for social mobilization. However, making an informed and judicious choice is a dilemma for the Chinese government in the vaccine promotion context. ⋯ Most Chinese netizens believe that the vaccine is less expensive than previously thought, while some claim they cannot afford it for their entire family. The findings demonstrate that Chinese individuals are inclined to be positive about side effects over time and are proud of China's involvement with vaccine development. Nevertheless, they have a collective misunderstanding about inactivated vaccines, insisting that inactivated vaccines are safer than other vaccines. Reflecting on netizens' collective responses, the unfolding determinants of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance provide illuminating benchmarks for vaccine-promoting policies.
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J. Med. Internet Res. · Jan 2021
ReviewThe Role of Health Technologies in Multicomponent Primary Care Interventions: Systematic Review.
Several countries around the world have implemented multicomponent interventions to enhance primary care, as a way of strengthening their health systems to cope with an aging chronically ill population and rising costs. Some of these efforts have included technology-based enhancements as one of the features to support the overall intervention, but their details and impacts have not been explored. ⋯ Technologies and digital health have not played a major role within comprehensive innovation efforts aimed at enhancing primary care, reflecting that these technologies have not yet reached maturity or wider acceptance as a means for improving primary care. Stronger policy and financial support, and advocacy of key stakeholders are needed to encourage the introduction of efficient technological innovations, which are backed by evidence-based research, so that digital technologies can fulfill the promise of supporting strong sustainable primary care.
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J. Med. Internet Res. · Jan 2021
Effect of Interactive eHealth Interventions on Improving Medication Adherence in Adults With Long-Term Medication: Systematic Review.
Medication nonadherence leads to suboptimal treatment outcomes, making it a major priority in health care. eHealth provides an opportunity to offer medication adherence interventions with minimal effort from health care providers whose time and resources are limited. ⋯ Overall, this review supports the hypothesis that interactive eHealth interventions can be effective in improving medication adherence. Intervention strategies that improve patients' treatment involvement and their medication management skills are most promising and should be considered for implementation in practice.
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J. Med. Internet Res. · Jan 2021
Comparative StudyA Novel Machine Learning Framework for Comparison of Viral COVID-19-Related Sina Weibo and Twitter Posts: Workflow Development and Content Analysis.
Social media plays a critical role in health communications, especially during global health emergencies such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is a lack of a universal analytical framework to extract, quantify, and compare content features in public discourse of emerging health issues on different social media platforms across a broad sociocultural spectrum. ⋯ We extracted a rich set of content features from social media data to accurately characterize public discourse related to COVID-19 in different sociocultural backgrounds. In addition, this universal framework can be adopted to analyze social media discussions of other emerging health issues beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.