The Expert Next Door: Interactions With Friends and Family During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic thrust the field of public health into the spotlight. For many epidemiologists, biostatisticians, and other public health professionals, this caused the professional aspects of our lives to collide with the personal, as friends and family reached out with concerns and questions. Learning how to navigate this space was new for many of us and required refining our communication style depending on context, setting, and audience. Some of us took to social media, utilizing our existing personal accounts to share information after sorting through and summarizing the rapidly emerging literature to keep loved ones safe. However, those in our lives sometimes asked unanswerable questions, or began distancing themselves when we suggested more stringent guidance than they had hoped for, causing additional stress during an already traumatic time. We often had to remind ourselves that we were also individuals experiencing this pandemic and that our time-intensive efforts were meaningful, relevant, and impactful. As this pandemic and other public health crises continue, we encourage members of our discipline to consider how we can best use shared lessons from this period and to recognize that our professional knowledge, when used in our personal lives, can promote, protect, and bolster confidence in public health.

Contextualizing Engagement With Health Information on Facebook: Using the Social Media Content and Context Elicitation Method.

BACKGROUND: Most of what is known regarding health information engagement on social media stems from quantitative methodologies. Public health literature often quantifies engagement by measuring likes, comments, and/or shares of posts within health organizations' Facebook pages. However, this content may not represent the health information (and misinformation) generally available to and consumed by platform users. Furthermore, some individuals may prefer to engage with information without leaving quantifiable digital traces. Mixed methods approaches may provide a way of surpassing the constraints of assessing engagement with health information by using only currently available social media metrics. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to discuss the limitations of current approaches in assessing health information engagement on Facebook and presents the social media content and context elicitation method, a qualitatively driven, mixed methods approach to understanding engagement with health information and how engagement may lead to subsequent actions. METHODS: Data collection, management, and analysis using the social media content and context elicitation method are presented. This method was developed for a broader study exploring how and why US Latinos and Latinas engage with cancer prevention and screening information on Facebook. The study included 20 participants aged between 40 and 75 years without cancer who participated in semistructured, in-depth interviews to discuss their Facebook use and engagement with cancer information on the platform. Participants accessed their Facebook account alongside the researcher, typed cancer in the search bar, and discussed cancer-related posts they engaged with during the previous 12 months. Engagement was defined as liking, commenting, and/or sharing a post; clicking on a post link; reading an article in a post; and/or watching a video within a post. Content engagement prompted questions regarding the reasons for engagement and whether engagement triggered further action. Data were managed using MAXQDA (VERBI GmbH) and analyzed using thematic and content analyses. RESULTS: Data emerging from the social media content and context elicitation method demonstrated that participants mainly engaged with cancer prevention and screening information by viewing and/or reading content (48/66, 73%) without liking, commenting, or sharing it. This method provided rich content regarding how US Latinos and Latinas engage with and act upon cancer prevention and screening information on Facebook. We present 2 emblematic cases from the main study to exemplify the additional information and context elicited from this methodology, which is currently lacking from quantitative approaches. CONCLUSIONS: The social media content and context elicitation method allows a better representation and deeper contextualization of how people engage with and act upon health information and misinformation encountered on social media. This method may be applied to future studies regarding how to best communicate health information on social media, including how these affect assessments of message credibility and accuracy, which can influence health outcomes.

Factors Associated with Intention to Receive Vaccination against COVID-19 in Puerto Rico: An Online Survey of Adults.

We conducted an online survey among adults in Puerto Rico to identify factors associated with the intention to receive vaccination against COVID-19. Sociodemographic variables were analyzed independently for association with intent to receive vaccination. Significant associations were included in the multivariate logistic regression analysis. A total of 1016 responses were available for analysis. In the bivariate analysis, younger age, higher education, pre-COVID-19 employment, male sex, gay/bisexual identity, and single marital status were associated with increased intent to receive the vaccination. In the multivariate logistic regression, younger, male respondents, and those with higher educational attainment reported higher intent to receive the vaccination. Lower-income and living outside the San Juan metro region were associated with lower intent to receive the vaccination. National and international health organizations were identified as the most reliable sources of information, followed by healthcare professionals. These findings highlight the importance of considering sociodemographic characteristics and using trusted sources of information when designing COVID-19 vaccination public messaging.

Longitudinal Risk Communication: A Research Agenda for Communicating in a Pandemic.

In this paper, we present a research agenda for longitudinal risk communication during a global pandemic. Starting from an understanding that traditional approaches to risk communication for epidemics, crises, and disasters have focused on short-duration events, we acknowledge the limitations of existing theories, frameworks, and models for both research and practice in a rapidly changing communication environment. We draw from scholarship in communication, sociology, anthropology, public health, emergency management, law, and technology to identify research questions that are fundamental to the communication challenges that have emerged under the threat of COVID-19. We pose a series of questions focused around 5 topics, then offer a catalog of prior research to serve as points of departure for future research efforts. This compiled agenda offers guidance to scholars engaging in practitioner-informed research and provides risk communicators with a set of substantial research questions to guide future knowledge needs.