Yi Shan, Meng Ji, Wenxiu Xie, Xiaomin Zhang, Harrison Ng Chok, Rongying Li, Xiaobo Qian, Kam-Yiu Lam, Chi-Yin Chow, Tianyong Hao
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: COVID-19-related health inequalities were reported in some studies, showing the failure in public health and communication. Studies investigating the contexts and causes of these inequalities pointed to the contribution of communication inequality or poor health literacy and information access to engagement with health care services. However, no study exclusively dealt with health inequalities induced by the use of social media during COVID-19.
Objective: This review aimed to identify and summarize COVID-19-related health inequalities induced by the use of social media and the associated contributing factors and to characterize the relationship between the use of social media and health disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: A systematic review was conducted on this topic in light of the protocol of the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) 2020 statement. Keyword searches were performed to collect papers relevant to this topic in multiple databases: PubMed (which includes MEDLINE [Ovid] and other subdatabases), ProQuest (which includes APA PsycINFO, Biological Science Collection, and others), ACM Digital Library, and Web of Science, without any year restriction. Of the 670 retrieved publications, 10 were initially selected based on the predefined selection criteria. These 10 articles were then subjected to quality analysis before being analyzed in the final synthesis and discussion.
Results: Of the 10 articles, 1 was further removed for not meeting the quality assessment criteria. Finally, 9 articles were found to be eligible and selected for this review. We derived the characteristics of these studies in terms of publication years, journals, study locations, locations of study participants, study design, sample size, participant characteristics, and potential risk of bias, and the main results of these studies in terms of the types of social media, social media use-induced health inequalities, associated factors, and proposed resolutions. On the basis of the thematic synthesis of these extracted data, we derived 4 analytic themes, namely health information inaccessibility-induced health inequalities and proposed resolutions, misinformation-induced health inequalities and proposed resolutions, disproportionate attention to COVID-19 information and proposed resolutions, and higher odds of social media-induced psychological distress and proposed resolutions.
Conclusions: This paper was the first systematic review on this topic. Our findings highlighted the great value of studying the COVID-19-related health knowledge gap, the digital technology-induced unequal distribution of health information, and the resulting health inequalities, thereby providing empirical evidence for understanding the relationship between social media use and health inequalities in the context of COVID-19 and suggesting practical solutions to such disparities. Researchers, social media, health practitioners, and policy makers can draw on these findings to promote health equality while minimizing social media use-induced health inequalities.
背景:一些研究报告了与covid -19相关的卫生不平等现象,表明公共卫生和沟通方面的失败。调查这些不平等的背景和原因的研究指出,沟通不平等或卫生知识和信息获取不足对参与医疗保健服务的影响。然而,没有一项研究专门涉及COVID-19期间使用社交媒体导致的健康不平等。目的:本综述旨在识别和总结社交媒体使用导致的COVID-19相关健康不平等及其相关促成因素,并表征社交媒体使用与COVID-19大流行期间健康差异之间的关系。方法:根据PRISMA(首选系统评价和荟萃分析报告项目)2020声明的方案,对该主题进行系统评价。通过关键词搜索,在多个数据库中收集与该主题相关的论文:PubMed(包括MEDLINE [Ovid]等子数据库)、ProQuest(包括APA PsycINFO、Biological Science Collection等)、ACM Digital Library和Web of Science,没有年份限制。在检索到的670份出版物中,最初根据预定义的选择标准选择了10份。然后对这10篇文章进行质量分析,然后进行最后的综合和讨论分析。结果:10篇文章中,有1篇因不符合质量评价标准而被进一步删除。最终,9篇文章被纳入本综述。我们从发表年份、期刊、研究地点、研究参与者地点、研究设计、样本量、参与者特征和潜在偏倚风险等方面得出了这些研究的特征,并从社交媒体类型、社交媒体使用导致的健康不平等、相关因素和建议的解决方案等方面得出了这些研究的主要结果。在对这些提取的数据进行主题综合的基础上,我们得出了4个分析主题,即卫生信息不可获取性导致的健康不平等和建议决议、错误信息导致的健康不平等和建议决议、对COVID-19信息和建议决议的不成比例的关注、以及社交媒体引起的心理困扰和建议决议的更高几率。结论:本文首次对该主题进行了系统综述。我们的研究结果突出了研究与COVID-19相关的卫生知识差距、数字技术导致的卫生信息不平等分布以及由此产生的卫生不平等的重要价值,从而为理解COVID-19背景下社交媒体使用与卫生不平等之间的关系提供了经验证据,并提出了解决这种不平等的实际解决方案。研究人员、社交媒体、卫生从业人员和政策制定者可以利用这些发现来促进健康平等,同时最大限度地减少社交媒体使用导致的健康不平等。