Social media epidemic intelligence and surveillance for chronic conditions and their associated risk factors

Primary supervisor

Pari Delir Haghighi

Co-supervisors

  • Prof Flavia Cicuttini, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University

Collecting and analysing social media content (e.g., Reddit), along with using Google Trends, presents a great opportunity to develop social media epidemic intelligence. This approach can enhance the understanding of chronic conditions such as arthritis, back pain, and knee pain, as well as track associated areas such as treatments and risk factors, including obesity, diet, physical activity, and exercise. This approach can be also used to understand the community attitudes about these conditions, and see if there are changes over time as there as new public campaigns.

Student cohort

Single Semester
Double Semester

Aim/outline

The project aims to leverage Google Trends, social media platforms such as Reddit, and other potential sources to investigate the relationships between chronic diseases like knee or back pain and risk factors such as diet, obesity, exercise and medication. Additionally, it will focus on understanding conversations that are happening around surgery, and regional mapping, population numbers, and their context.

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URLs/references

Cohen SA, Cohen LE, Tijerina JD, Bouz G, Lefebvre R, Stevanovic M, Heckmann ND. Google trends as a tool for evaluating public interest in total knee arthroplasty and total hip arthroplasty. J Clin Transl Res. 2021 Jul 16;7(4):456-466. PMID: 34667892; PMCID: PMC8520707.

Robert, Delir Haghighi P, Burstein F, Urquhart D, Cicuttini F, Investigating Individuals’ Perceptions Regarding the Context Around the Low Back Pain Experience: Topic Modeling Analysis of Twitter Data, Journal of Medical Internet Res 2021;23(12):e26093

Required knowledge

Social media content analysis skills

Programming skills

Strong research and critical analysis skills