Assessment of Mental Health and Coping Disparities Among Racial and Ethnic Groups Amid COVID-19 From the "How Right Now" Campaign.

Objectives: How Right Now (HRN) is an evidence-based, culturally responsive communication campaign developed to facilitate coping and resilience among US groups disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. To inform the development of this campaign, we examined patterns in emotional health, stress, and coping strategies among HRN's audiences, focusing on differences among racial and ethnic groups.

Methods: We used a national probability panel, AmeriSpeak, to collect survey data from HRN's priority audience members in English and Spanish at 2 time points (May 2020 and May 2021).

How Right Now? Supporting Mental Health and Resilience Amid COVID-19.

The How Right Now communication initiative (HRN) was developed to facilitate resilience amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. HRN was designed as a conduit for promoting mental health and addressing feelings of grief, worry, and stress experienced during this time. This article provides an overview of the rapid, mixed-method, culturally responsive formative research process undertaken to inform the development of HRN.

Understanding the messages and motivation of vaccine hesitant or refusing social media influencers.

Background: While anti-vaccine messages on social media have been studied for content, reach, and effectiveness, less is known about those who create and promote the messages. Online influencers, or 'everyday people who are influential within their online social networks', are viewed as trusted voices who are often making similar life decisions as their followers. Therefore, their experiences with and perspectives on health issues can be persuasive.

A Content Analysis of Social Support Messages about Environmental Breast Cancer Risk within Blogs for Mothers.

Bloggers can help stimulate online conversations among their readers about a variety of health topics, including breast cancer. However, in previous studies, researchers have not specifically examined supportive messages within an online blogger community that stem from an intervention where bloggers were provided with evidence-based information about breast cancer risk that they could tailor and disseminate to their readers. In the current study, we content analyzed 282 supportive messages within online conversations from participants in blogger communities over a 2-month period immediately following an intervention where the authors provided 74 bloggers who write about motherhood issues with an infographic based on evidence-based information from the Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Program (BCERP) about environmental breast cancer risk/prevention.

Helping Mothers and Daughters Talk about Environmental Breast Cancer Risk and Risk-Reducing Lifestyle Behaviors.

: Mothers and daughters struggle to talk about breast cancer risk. Even less attention is paid to environmental determinants of cancer. Third-party online approaches can be helpful navigating these conversations.

Culturally Appropriate Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Messages: Targeting Racially and Ethnically Diverse Mothers.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)-funded Breast Cancer and Environment Research Program (BCERP) provides evidence-informed educational materials targeting mothers with daughters to help them engage in lifestyle changes to reduce their environmental risk of breast cancer. Building on a partnership we developed to disseminate these materials via social media, we teamed with mommy bloggers and readers to evaluate the cultural appropriateness of the information using evidence-based practices for message design. We sought to (1) identify cross-culture factors that speak to a broad group of mothers and culture-specific factors to integrate when targeting specific cultures and (2) capture cultural challenges mothers encounter when they share the information with family to understand the social context in which they receive, interpret, and act on risk-reducing messages.

Metadata Correction: Partnering With Mommy Bloggers to Disseminate Breast Cancer Risk Information: Social Media Intervention.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.2196/12441.].

Partnering With Mommy Bloggers to Disseminate Breast Cancer Risk Information: Social Media Intervention.

Background: Women are concerned about reducing their breast cancer risk, particularly if they have daughters. Social media platforms, such as blogs written by mothers, are increasingly being recognized as a channel that women use to make personal and family health-related decisions. Government initiatives (eg, Interagency Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Coordinating Committee) and researchers have called for scientists and the community to partner and disseminate scientifically and community-informed environmental risk information.

The "Real World"? Effects of Online Communication about Prostate Cancer on Offline Communication.

Introduction: Online peer-to-peer social support programs are based on the premise that support from others who have been through a similar experience can help reduce the negative impacts of disease. Such support programs are increasingly found online, but how these conversations translate into real world interactions about health concerns is currently not well understood.

Methods: Grounded in social network theory, this formative study explored how participants in an online prostate cancer community comprised of patients and their families translate their online conversations into offline ones.

Perceptions About Disseminating Health Information Among Mommy Bloggers: Quantitative Study.

Background: Social media are potentially powerful channels for communicating relevant health information in culturally sensitive and influential ways to key audiences. Moreover, these channels hold promise for promoting awareness and knowledge of health risks, prevention, and treatment by utilizing opinion leaders for message dissemination. Despite limited empirical evidence to-date, early promising results suggest that blogs are a form of social media that should be examined as worthy channels for health communication.

A review of social media methods and lessons learned from the National Children's Study.

Introduction: Given the reach and influence of social media, the National Children's Study Vanguard Study evaluated the feasibility, acceptability, and cost of using social media to support participant retention.

Methods: We describe a social media experiment designed to assess the impact of social media on participant retention, discuss several key considerations for integrating social media into longitudinal research, and review factors that may influence engagement in research-related social media.

Results: User participation varied but was most active when at launch.

Leveraging social and digital media for participant recruitment: A review of methods from the Bayley Short Form Formative Study.

Introduction: Social media is increasingly being used in research, including recruitment.

Methods: For the Bayley Short Form Formative Study, which was conducted under the the National Children's Study, traditional methods of recruitment proved to be ineffective. Therefore, digital media were identified as potential channels for recruitment.

Perceived Stress in Online Prostate Cancer Community Participants: Examining Relationships with Stigmatization, Social Support Network Preference, and Social Support Seeking.

Men with prostate cancer often need social support to help them cope with illness-related physiological and psychosocial challenges. Whether those needs are met depends on receiving support optimally matched to their needs. This study examined relationships between perceived stress, prostate cancer-related stigma, weak-tie support preference, and online community use for social support in a survey of online prostate cancer community participants (n = 149).

Trending now: future directions in digital media for the public health sector.

Background: Digital media usage is expanding enormously and is starting to be used as a public health intervention and communication tool. It has an ability to increase the reach of public health research and communication, as well as drive measurable behaviour change. But there is an absence of both deep and wide understanding of the opportunities within digital media, i.