Impact of the World Inflammatory Bowel Disease Day and Crohn’s and Colitis Awareness Week on Population Interest Between 2016 and 2020: Google Trends Analysis

BACKGROUND: More than 6 million people are affected by inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) globally. The World IBD Day (WID, May 19) and Crohn’s and Colitis Awareness Week (CCAW, December 1-7) occur yearly as national health observances to raise public awareness of IBD, but their effects are unclear. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between WID or CCAW and the public health awareness on IBD represented by the Google search engine query data. METHODS: This study evaluates the impact of WID and CCAW on the public awareness of IBD in the United States and worldwide from 2016 to 2020 by using the relative search volume of “IBD,” “ulcerative colitis,” and “Crohn’s disease” in Google Trends. To identify significant time points of trend changes (joinpoints), we performed joinpoint regression analysis. RESULTS: No joinpoints were noted around the time of WID or CCAW during the study period in the search results of the United States. Worldwide, joinpoints were noted around WID in 2020 with the search for “IBD” and around CCAW in 2017 and 2019 with the search for “ulcerative colitis.” However, the extents of trend changes were modest without statistically significant increases. CONCLUSIONS: These results posed a question that WID and CCAW might not have worked as expected to raise public awareness of IBD. Additional studies are needed to precisely estimate the impact of health observances to raise the awareness of IBD.