Supporting the care to breast cancer patients with unique needs: Evidence from online community members’ responses

Background

Breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in women globally. Online cancer communities (OCCs) provide platforms for breast cancer patients to connect, share experiences, and support each other. These communities facilitate discussions on a range of health- and non-health-related topics. However, posts discussing unique topics may receive varying levels of attention and support. This study aims to devise a method for identifying and supporting such posts, enhancing community response and support strategies.

Methods

We propose a Uniqueness Score Extraction Framework to compute health- and non-health-related uniqueness scores for online community posts. The framework utilizes deep learning-based natural language processing models to identify the topics discussed in OCCs and calculates the health- and non-health-related uniqueness scores of a post based on the uniqueness of the topics identified by the BERTopic model. We further employ econometric models to assess how the uniqueness scores of posts affect community members’ responses to those posts.

Results

Our study reveals that posts with a higher concentration of unique health-related topics in OCCs elicit quicker, more frequent, but shorter responses. Conversely, posts containing more unique non-health-related topics in the entire post prompt faster and longer responses, unless these topics become overly dominant, in which case the number of replies decreases, and response times are prolonged.

Conclusion

Our research develops a framework to identify posts with high uniqueness scores in OCCs, and sheds light on community member responses to these discussions. The findings indicate that while members are supportive, particularly regarding health-related topics, the post-content’s nature and focus greatly affect their engagement. These discoveries could enhance our understanding of community dynamics in OCCs, offering valuable implications for researchers, OCC facilitators, and medical professionals in supporting patients within online platforms.