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University of Wisconsin–Madison

Category: Health Information Technology Studies

CCCR and HITS publish “News Attention and Social Distancing Behavior Amid COVID-19”

In the new article “News Attention and Social Distancing Behavior Amid COVID-19: How Media Trust and Social Norms Moderate a Mediated Relationship” in the journal Health Communication, the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal (CCCR) group examined the relationship between news media attention and social distancing behavior.

Abstract

Despite the fact that social distancing is an effective mean to slow the spread of COVID-19, individuals often fail to practice this behavior. Major US news media provided information to the public about social distancing after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, potentially spurring this preventative health practice. Using data from a representative sample of US residents, this study aims to understand the relationship between news media attention and social-distancing behavior via three potential mediators: perceived effectiveness of social distancing, perceived susceptibility to COVID-19 infection, and perceived negative consequences of infection. Media trust and social norms concerning social distancing were included as potential moderators of these relationships, along with political ideology. With multiple regression and mediation analyses, we found that news media attention was positively associated with social-distancing behavior during this period. Perceived effectiveness of social distancing mediated this relationship, while perceived susceptibility and negative consequences of COVID-19 did not. Notably, media trust negatively moderated news attention’s impact on the perceived effectiveness of social distancing, with the relationship being more pronounced among those who have lower trust in media. Political ideology did not moderate the relationship between news attention and perceived effectiveness. Further, social norms negatively moderated the relationship between perceived effectiveness and social-distancing behavior, with this relationship growing stronger among those uncertain about the adoption of social-distancing norms in their circle. Overall, the study found news media to have an important role in promoting social-distancing behavior when they emphasized safety measures across the ideological spectrum.

Full citation: “News Attention and Social Distancing Behavior Amid COVID-19: How Media Trust and Social Norms Moderate a Mediated Relationship,” Xiaoya Jiang, Juwon Hwang, Dhavan V. Shah, Shreenita Ghosh and Markus, Health Communication, DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2020.1868064.

Access the article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33438450/

HITS publishes “Online health information seeking, medical care beliefs and timeliness of medical check-ups among African Americans”

In the new article “Online health information seeking, medical care beliefs and timeliness of medical check-ups among African Americans” in the journal Patient Education and Counseling, the Health Information and Technology Studies (HITS) group found links between technology use and positive health behaviors among African Americans. Continue reading

New publication advances research framework for digital health intervention

A new journal article from the Health Information Technology Studies (HITS) team, led by “Estelle” Ranran Mi, was published in Health Communication. The paper, “Intraindividual, Dyadic, and Network Communication in a Digital Health Intervention: Distinguishing Message Exposure from Message Production,” revealed nuanced intervention effects of a smartphone-based application for addiction recovery by examining message exposure and production at different levels of communication. Continue reading

New article from HITS group “Framing the Clinical Encounter: Shared Decision-Making, Mammography Screening, and Decision Satisfaction”

The Health Information Technology Studies (HITS) group has a new article out in the Journal of Health Communication. The article, “Framing the Clinical Encounter: Shared Decision-Making, Mammography Screening, and Decision Satisfaction” was published in October 2020. Continue reading

New HITS article “Understanding How e-Health Intervention Meets Psychosocial Needs of Breast Cancer Patients”

In the new article “Understanding How e-Health Intervention Meets Psychosocial Needs of Breast Cancer Patients: The Pathways of Influence on Quality of Life and Cancer Concerns” in the journal Psycho-Oncology, the Health Information Technology Studies (HITS) group found that using e-health interventions can help patients improve cancer information management skills and emotional functioning, contributing to better short-term health outcomes. Continue reading

New HITS publication “Potential Influences of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Drug Use and HIV Care”

In the new article “Potential Influences of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Drug Use and HIV Care Among People Living with HIV and Substance Use Disorders: Experience from a Pilot mHealth Intervention” in the journal AIDS and Behavior, the Health Information Technology Studies (HITS) group examined the health and social consequences of the pandemic on people with HIV and substance use disorder. Continue reading

HITS publishes “Exploring the Role of Social Support in Promoting Patient Participation in Health Care Among Women with Breast Cancer”

In the new article “Exploring the Role of Social Support in Promoting Patient Participation in Health Care Among Women with Breast Cancer” in the journal Health Communication, the Health Information Technology Studies (HITS) group studied how social factors influence a patient’s participation in health care.

Abstract:Scholars have adopted Street’s (2003) ecological model of communication in medical encounters to investigate the factors promoting patient participation in health care. However, factors demonstrated in the ecological model were bounded in the context of medical care primarily focusing on health care providers and patients. Social factors, such as patients’ relationships and supportive communication with others outside the context of health care remain relatively unexplored. To expand the purview of our understanding of factors that influence patient participation, this research integrated social support literature into the research on physician-patient communication and proposed a model which described a process through which social support can enhance patient participation in health care. The data analyzed in this study were a part of two larger clinical trials in which 661 women with breast cancer were recruited from three cancer institutions in the United States. The results from structural equation modeling analysis from cross-sectional and longitudinal data provided strong evidence for the hypotheses predicting that perceived social support was positively associated with health information competence, which in turn fully mediated the association between social support and patient participation in health care. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Full citation: “Exploring the Role of Social Support in Promoting Patient Participation in Health Care Among Women with Breast Cancer,” Mengfei Guan, Jeong Yeob Han, Dhavan V. Shah and David H. Gustafson, D. H., Health Communication, DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2020.1773704.

Access the article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32500731/

New publication: Giving and receiving social support in online substance use disorder forums: How self-efficacy moderates effects on relapse

The Health Information Technology Studies (HITS) group has published the article “Giving and receiving social support in online substance use disorder forums: How self-efficacy moderates effects on relapse” in the journal Patient Education and Counseling. Continue reading

Shah and Curtin Win $3.4 Million NIH Grant to Support Opioid Recovery

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin—Madison have received a $3.42 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a mobile phone-based app to prevent opioid relapse among those trying to recover.

The project builds on the prior work that Dhavan Shah, Louis A. & Mary E. Maier-Bascom Professor in UW-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and John Curtin, director of clinical training in Department of Psychology, have done detecting and predicting relapse.

The broad goals of this project are to develop and deliver models to forecast the day-by-day probability of opioid and other drug use among people trying to abstain from drugs while in recovery. This lapse risk prediction model will generated using the Addiction-Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System (A-CHESS) mobile app, a tool developed by researchers in the UW’s Center for Health Enhancement System Studies.

The study will focus on about 500 participants who are abstaining from drug use while in recovery. The study will follow 12 months of their recovery, with observations occurring as early as one-week post-abstinence and as late as 18 months post-abstinence across participants in the sample.

“Relapse can happen early in recovery for alcohol and substance use disorders, but it can also happen months, and even years, after someone quits,” Curtin says. “One of the biggest challenges that people with alcohol and substance use disorders have is to continually monitor their recovery and look out for risks for relapse, essentially for the rest of their lives.”

While relapse often seems to come out of the blue from the perspective of the participant, Shah says, hindsight often yields indicators that the individual was a risk. The clues can come from what they post, who they talk with, and the places they frequent.

“Over the past five years, we have been working to use emerging mobile sensing capabilities from smartphones and wearable sensors to build models that can predict, in real-time, the likelihood that someone will lapse back to drug use,” Shah says. Working with his students, he recently published two articles predicting the risk of relapse based solely on the language that participants used while engaging with the A-CHESS system.

Curtin’s lab is about to complete a first project that has followed people with alcohol use disorder for the first 3 months of their sobriety and can predict with better than 80 percent accuracy whether they will use alcohol on any given day. Using cell phone communications, including voice calls and texts, and GPS data to establish locations where individuals have used alcohol in the past, the researchers can monitor signals about the integrity of an individual’s recovery and abstinence.

“More importantly, we can do this with almost complete passiveness, with no burden placed on the individual,” Curtin says.

HITS Team Publishes on Health Disparities

Two journal articles from the HITS (Health Information Technology Studies) team, one published in Health Communication and the other in Health Education Research, tackle the role of information technologies in health disparities.

The Health Communication paper led by Juwon Hwang, “Health Information Sources, Perceived Vaccination Benefits, and Maintenance of Childhood Vaccination Schedules,” investigates the associations between evaluations of health information sources, parental perceptions of childhood vaccination benefits, and the maintenance of vaccination schedules for their children. Analyzing a sample of 4,174 parents who have at least one child under the age of 18, including 138 with a childhood autism diagnosis. The study finds social media are negatively associated with their perceptions of vaccination benefits compared with TV, magazines, and interpersonal talk.  The full citation is below:

  • Hwang, J., & Shah, D. V. (2018). Health Information Sources, Perceived Vaccination Benefits, and Maintenance of Childhood Vaccination Schedules. Health Communication, 1-10.

The paper led by Dami Ko, “Physical Activity in Persons with Diabetes: Its Relationship with Media Use for Health Information, Socioeconomic Status and Age,” analyzes national survey data of 770 persons with diabetes distinguished into either a low or high SES group. Results reveal television use was associated with increased physical activity levels, whereas Internet use was associated with decreased physical activity, especially in older, low SES persons with diabetes. The findings suggest media targeting strategies to provide PA-related information to low SES persons with diabetes. The full citation is below:

  • Ko, D., Myung, E., Moon, T. J., & Shah, D. V. (2019). Physical activity in persons with diabetes: its relationship with media use for health information, socioeconomic status and age. Health Education Research.