Patient information plays a pivotal role in preparing individuals for hospital visits and empowering them to actively participate in decision-making processes regarding their healthcare. However, many patients face challenges related to reading comprehension. In response, podcasts have become a popular, user-friendly medium for sharing essential and easily understandable information in an engaging format.The aim of the present project was to use a user-centered approach to develop podcasts providing patient information prior to hospital visits. We aimed to describe the steps of the development in detail with the purpose of inspiring podcast development in the future.In Phase 1 we conducted interviews with patients and focus groups with clinicians based on the "empathy map" method, with the purpose of exploring patients' needs on which to subsequently build the podcasts' content and format. In Phase 2 we produced and refined the podcasts on the basis of feedback from clinician- and patients representatives.Our results indicated the importance of clear and concise language, personalization of communication, and content alignment with patients' needs. Our project resulted in a description of each step of the development that can be used as inspiration for others who wish to take a user-centered approach to podcast development.
To design effective health messages, this study investigates the effects of gain-loss framing and relevant moderating effects in the context of college students' alcohol use. Specifically, based on an online experiment, we tested the moderation effects of message-sidedness and binge-drinking behaviors using a mediation model in which the association between gain-loss framing and behavioral intentions is mediated by attitudes toward binge-drinking. Four hundred thirty-four Korean college students participated in this study. Hayes' PROCESS Macro for SPSS was employed for the analysis. The results show that loss-framing significantly increased participants' unfavorable attitudes toward binge-drinking in the one-sided message condition. Moreover, attitudes toward binge-drinking were more significantly associated with behavioral intentions to binge-drink among heavy drinkers than among non-heavy drinkers. Our findings suggest important theoretical and practical implications for the development of message-framing strategies in health campaigns designed to prevent college students' binge-drinking in collectivistic societies where the cultural meaning of drinking extends beyond the individual realm to the larger social context.
Community structure analysis compared city characteristics and newspaper coverage of state/local government responses to COVID-19 in 25 major U.S. cities, sampling all 250+ word articles from 4/4/20 to 7/6/20. The resulting 588 articles were coded for "prominence" and "direction" (favorable/unfavorable/balanced-neutral coverage), then combined into each newspaper's composite "Media Vector" (range=0.3552 to -0.5197, or 0.8749). Twenty-one of 25 newspapers (84%) displayed unfavorable coverage of local COVID-19 responses. Pearson correlations and regression analysis confirmed a muscular "violated way of life" pattern, when a community perceives itself as threatened by a "biological threat or a threat to a cherished way of life." Political and belief system polarization (in particular percent Evangelical and percent voting Republican) were strongly associated with unfavorable coverage of local pandemic responses, compared to more favorable responses linked to percent voting Democratic or percent Catholic. Vulnerability (percent uninsured) was also linked to negative coverage. Conversely, two different measures of access to healthcare (percent municipal spending on health and welfare, and physicians/100,000) were significantly linked to favorable coverage of the same local government efforts. Community structure theory's grass roots "bottom up" expectations linking community demographics to variations in reporting on critical issues were robustly confirmed.
Endometriosis is a chronic condition in which tissue resembling the endometrium grows outside the womb, causing severe chronic pain. People with endometriosis report difficulty in help-seeking and communicating with healthcare professionals, contributing to diagnosis delays and ineffective management. The present study aimed to identify barriers and facilitators to effective communication using the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) and COM-B model to inform behavior change intervention development. This study was a qualitative semi-structured interview and open-ended survey design. Thematic Analysis was utilized to identify barriers and facilitators to effective communication which were mapped to the TDF and COM-B model. Four women aged 25 to 44 with a formal diagnosis of endometriosis participated in interviews. Thirty-three participants, aged 20-48 years, participated in the online survey, 21 of whom had a diagnosis of endometriosis (12 were currently seeking diagnosis). Five COM-B domains were identified: reflective motivation, social and physical opportunity, physical and psychological capability. Ten TDF domains were reflected in concerns surrounding dismissal, disempowerment, social norms, beliefs about consequences, cognitive resources, reinforcement, and environmental context and resources, among others. This is the first study to identify barriers and facilitators of effective communication and help-seeking in light of established behavioral change theory and frameworks for comprehensive intervention design. This provides a comprehensive explanation of challenges in help-seeking for endometriosis and represents the first step in the development of complex interventions to improve help-seeking and communication for people with endometriosis. Interventions targeting salient barriers will have greater potential to change behavior and improve outcomes.
Concerns related to bodily integrity, medical mistrust, superstition, and disgust with respect to organ transplantation remain commonly cited barriers among African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic non-donors. The current study examined two narrative strategies for mitigating these barriers by eliciting feelings of happiness or sadness. African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic non-donors (N = 576) were randomly assigned to a radio ad that communicated either a recipient narrative or a waiting list narrative. As expected, the recipient narrative elicited greater feelings of happiness whereas the waiting list narrative aroused greater feelings of sadness. Moderated mediation analyses revealed models in which happiness, not sadness, was the mediator, such that the narrative frame was associated with ad persuasiveness. Additionally, only medical mistrust interacted with happiness to predict ad persuasiveness The results are discussed with an emphasis on message design strategies to employ among reluctant adult African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic potential donors.
Public participation in precision medicine (PM) research is essential to achieving effective health care but has been impeded by a lack of awareness and basic knowledge. There is a critical need for educational materials that can clearly explain PM to foster involvement. This randomized controlled trial with a posttest-only control group design aims to assess the effects of educational messages delivered through animations relative to live-action videos and leaflets on intentions of involvement in PM research. Knowledge as the moderator and four mediators (engagement, vividness, trustworthiness, and cognitive value) of the intended effects were also evaluated. A total of 326 U.S. adults were sampled from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Among participants with less knowledge about PM, animations produced stronger information-seeking intentions and willingness to participate than leaflets. The effects of three message modalities were not significantly different among average and highly knowledgeable participants. Engagement and vividness mediated the effects of animations relative to two other message modalities. Trustworthiness and cognitive value mediated the effects of animations relative to live-action videos. Overall, animations can be an effective communication strategy to motivate involvement in PM but its effectiveness could decline as knowledge increases. The explanations and implications of the findings were discussed.
Parental communication about body weight with their children is common across diverse families. The current study investigates how parents' feelings about their own bodies, beliefs about body weight, history of weight stigma, and weight-related characteristics contribute to the degree to which they talk about weight - both negatively and positively - with their adolescent children. The study sample was comprised of U.S. parents (N = 1936) from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds with children aged 10-17 years old. Parents completed an online survey with measures assessing their frequency of engaging in negative and positive weight communication with their children, along with several relevant psychosocial factors (i.e. body satisfaction, experienced weight stigma, associative stigma, body appreciation, beliefs about weight controllability, weight bias internalization). Study findings paint a complex picture, including some psychosocial factors (e.g. weight bias internalization) that are related to both more frequent negative and positive weight communication. Notably, higher levels of associative stigma were related to more frequent negative parental weight comments, and less frequent positive weight socialization. Findings can inform healthcare professionals in raising parents' awareness about how their personal beliefs and feelings about their own weight and their child's weight can contribute to how they engage in communication about weight with their children.