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Using Google Trends Data to Study Public Interest in Breast Cancer Screening in Brazil: Why Not a Pink February?

BACKGROUND: One of the major challenges of the Brazilian Ministry of Health is to foster interest in breast cancer screening (BCS), especially among women at high risk. Strategies have been developed to promote the early identification of breast cancer mainly by Pink October campaigns. The massive n...

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Autores principales: Vasconcellos-Silva, Paulo Roberto, Carvalho, Dárlinton Barbosa Feres, Trajano, Valéria, de La Rocque, Lucia Rodriguez, Sawada, Anunciata Cristina Marins Braz, Juvanhol, Leidjaira Lopes
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5399222/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28385679
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/publichealth.7015
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author Vasconcellos-Silva, Paulo Roberto
Carvalho, Dárlinton Barbosa Feres
Trajano, Valéria
de La Rocque, Lucia Rodriguez
Sawada, Anunciata Cristina Marins Braz
Juvanhol, Leidjaira Lopes
author_facet Vasconcellos-Silva, Paulo Roberto
Carvalho, Dárlinton Barbosa Feres
Trajano, Valéria
de La Rocque, Lucia Rodriguez
Sawada, Anunciata Cristina Marins Braz
Juvanhol, Leidjaira Lopes
author_sort Vasconcellos-Silva, Paulo Roberto
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: One of the major challenges of the Brazilian Ministry of Health is to foster interest in breast cancer screening (BCS), especially among women at high risk. Strategies have been developed to promote the early identification of breast cancer mainly by Pink October campaigns. The massive number of queries conducted through Google creates traffic data that can be analyzed to show unrevealed interest cycles and their seasonalities. OBJECTIVES: Using Google Trends, we studied cycles of public interest in queries toward mammography and breast cancer along the last 5 years. We hypothesize that these data may be correlated with collective interest cycles leveraged by national BCS campaigns such as Pink October. METHODS: Google Trends was employed to normalize traffic data on a scale from 0 (<1% of the peak volume) to 100 (peak of traffic) presented as weekly relative search volume (RSV) concerning mammography and breast cancer as search terms. A time series covered the last 261 weeks (November 2011 to October 2016), and RSV of both terms were compared with their respective annual means. Polynomial trendlines (second order) were employed to estimate overall trends. RESULTS: We found an upward trend for both terms over the 5 years, with almost parallel trendlines. Remarkable peaks were found along Pink October months— mammography and breast cancer searches were leveraged up reaching, respectively, 119.1% (2016) and 196.8% (2015) above annual means. Short downward RSVs along December-January months were also noteworthy along all the studied period. These trends traced an N-shaped pattern with higher peaks in Pink October months and sharp falls along subsequent December and January. CONCLUSIONS: Considering these findings, it would be reasonable to bring Pink October to the beginning of each year, thereby extending the beneficial effect of the campaigns. It would be more appropriate to start screening campaigns at the beginning of the year, when new resolutions are taken and new projects are added to everyday routines. Our work raises attention to the study of traffic data to encourage health campaign analysts to undertake better analysis based on marketing practices.
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spelling pubmed-53992222017-05-04 Using Google Trends Data to Study Public Interest in Breast Cancer Screening in Brazil: Why Not a Pink February? Vasconcellos-Silva, Paulo Roberto Carvalho, Dárlinton Barbosa Feres Trajano, Valéria de La Rocque, Lucia Rodriguez Sawada, Anunciata Cristina Marins Braz Juvanhol, Leidjaira Lopes JMIR Public Health Surveill Original Paper BACKGROUND: One of the major challenges of the Brazilian Ministry of Health is to foster interest in breast cancer screening (BCS), especially among women at high risk. Strategies have been developed to promote the early identification of breast cancer mainly by Pink October campaigns. The massive number of queries conducted through Google creates traffic data that can be analyzed to show unrevealed interest cycles and their seasonalities. OBJECTIVES: Using Google Trends, we studied cycles of public interest in queries toward mammography and breast cancer along the last 5 years. We hypothesize that these data may be correlated with collective interest cycles leveraged by national BCS campaigns such as Pink October. METHODS: Google Trends was employed to normalize traffic data on a scale from 0 (<1% of the peak volume) to 100 (peak of traffic) presented as weekly relative search volume (RSV) concerning mammography and breast cancer as search terms. A time series covered the last 261 weeks (November 2011 to October 2016), and RSV of both terms were compared with their respective annual means. Polynomial trendlines (second order) were employed to estimate overall trends. RESULTS: We found an upward trend for both terms over the 5 years, with almost parallel trendlines. Remarkable peaks were found along Pink October months— mammography and breast cancer searches were leveraged up reaching, respectively, 119.1% (2016) and 196.8% (2015) above annual means. Short downward RSVs along December-January months were also noteworthy along all the studied period. These trends traced an N-shaped pattern with higher peaks in Pink October months and sharp falls along subsequent December and January. CONCLUSIONS: Considering these findings, it would be reasonable to bring Pink October to the beginning of each year, thereby extending the beneficial effect of the campaigns. It would be more appropriate to start screening campaigns at the beginning of the year, when new resolutions are taken and new projects are added to everyday routines. Our work raises attention to the study of traffic data to encourage health campaign analysts to undertake better analysis based on marketing practices. JMIR Publications 2017-04-06 /pmc/articles/PMC5399222/ /pubmed/28385679 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/publichealth.7015 Text en ©Paulo Roberto Vasconcellos-Silva, Dárlinton Barbosa Feres Carvalho, Valéria Trajano, Lucia Rodriguez de La Rocque, Anunciata Cristina Marins Braz Sawada, Leidjaira Lopes Juvanhol. Originally published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (http://publichealth.jmir.org), 06.04.2017. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://publichealth.jmir.org, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Vasconcellos-Silva, Paulo Roberto
Carvalho, Dárlinton Barbosa Feres
Trajano, Valéria
de La Rocque, Lucia Rodriguez
Sawada, Anunciata Cristina Marins Braz
Juvanhol, Leidjaira Lopes
Using Google Trends Data to Study Public Interest in Breast Cancer Screening in Brazil: Why Not a Pink February?
title Using Google Trends Data to Study Public Interest in Breast Cancer Screening in Brazil: Why Not a Pink February?
title_full Using Google Trends Data to Study Public Interest in Breast Cancer Screening in Brazil: Why Not a Pink February?
title_fullStr Using Google Trends Data to Study Public Interest in Breast Cancer Screening in Brazil: Why Not a Pink February?
title_full_unstemmed Using Google Trends Data to Study Public Interest in Breast Cancer Screening in Brazil: Why Not a Pink February?
title_short Using Google Trends Data to Study Public Interest in Breast Cancer Screening in Brazil: Why Not a Pink February?
title_sort using google trends data to study public interest in breast cancer screening in brazil: why not a pink february?
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5399222/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28385679
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/publichealth.7015
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