Cancer information-seeking behaviors and information needs among Korean Americans in the online community.

Korean Americans tend to have less access to health service and cancer screening tests than all US population. It is necessary to understand their current cancer information-seeking behaviors and information needs to more effectively provide adequate cancer information. However, there is little known about their cancer information seeking behaviors and needs. The purpose of the study was to understand cancer information seeking behaviors and information needs among Korean Americans. Data were collected from MissyUSA, which is one of the biggest websites for the Korean community in the USA. A total of 393 free-texts from January to June 2013 were reviewed; 120 were deleted because the messages were not related to cancer health information. A total of 273 posted free-texts were analyzed for this study, using an open source text-mining software program called AntConc 3.2.4. The extracted terms were categorized based on coding systems, after linguistic variations were handled. Terms such as "surgery," "breast cancer," "examination," "cancer" (unspecified), "Korea," and "pain" were most frequently identified. Medical topics accounted for 71.4 % of the main topics of the postings. Treatment was the most frequently discussed in the medical topics while in the non-medical category, the most frequently discussed topic was recommendations for hospitals or doctors. In relation to types of cancer, breast cancer was the greatest concern, followed by cervical and liver cancer. The findings from this study can help in establishing more effective strategies to provide better cancer information among Korean Americans by assessing their cancer information seeking trends and information needs.

An effective COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy intervention focused on the relative risks of vaccination and infection.

We designed the Relative Risk Tool (RRT) to help people assess the relative risks associated with COVID-19 vaccination and infection. In May 2022 (N = 400) and November 2022 (N = 615), U.S. residents participated in a survey that included questions about the risks of vaccination and infection. In both cohorts, we found an association between relative risk perception and vaccine hesitancy. Participants in the May cohort were randomly assigned an intervention: to see information from the RRT or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). After the intervention, participants answered the same questions about risk perception and vaccination intent again. The RRT was more effective than the CDC at changing risk perception and increasing vaccination intent. In November, the survey structure was the same, but the RRT was the only intervention included, and we confirmed that the RRT was effective at changing opinions in this new sample. Importantly, the RRT provided accurate information about the risks of serious adverse outcomes to vaccination and still increased vaccination intent. Our work suggests that the RRT helps people assess relative risk, which can in turn help empower them to make informed decisions and ultimately reduce vaccine hesitancy.

A Survey of Conversational Agents and Their Applications for Self-Management of Chronic Conditions.

Conversational agents have gained their ground in our daily life and various domains including healthcare. Chronic condition self-management is one of the promising healthcare areas in which conversational agents demonstrate significant potential to contribute to alleviating healthcare burdens from chronic conditions. This survey paper introduces and outlines types of conversational agents, their generic architecture and workflow, the implemented technologies, and their application to chronic condition self-management.

Respite Service Use Among Dementia and Nondementia Caregivers: Findings From the National Caregiving in the U.S. 2015 Survey.

This study examined factors related to respite service use among caregivers and further tested the moderating effect of dementia caregiver status in these relationships using nationally representative U.S. data. Logistic regression analyses were conducted among 1203 caregivers (276 dementia and 927 nondementia caregivers). Caregivers' race and ethnicity as a predisposing factor, caregivers' self-rated health as an enabling factor, and care recipients' living arrangement and functional limitations as need factors were significantly related to respite service use. Moreover, dementia caregiver status moderated the association between enabling factors (i.e., household income, work status, and self-rated health) and respite service use. Our findings imply that dementia caregivers may be more in need of respite service use than nondementia caregivers when they have limited enabling factors (e.g., lower household income, nonworking status, poorer health). Policy and practice efforts that specifically support enabling factors are suggested to promote more respite service use among dementia caregivers.

Towards Developing a Voice-activated Self-monitoring Application (VoiS) for Adults with Diabetes and Hypertension.

The integration of motivational strategies and self-management theory with mHealth tools is a promising approach to changing the behavior of patients with chronic disease. In this manuscript, we describe the development and current architecture of a prototype voice-activated self-monitoring application (VoiS) which is based on these theories. Unlike prior mHealth applications which require textual input, VoiS app relies on the more convenient and adaptable approach of asking users to verbally input markers of diabetes and hypertension control through a smart speaker. The VoiS app can provide real-time feedback based on these markers; thus, it has the potential to serve as a remote, regular, source of feedback to support behavior change. To enhance the usability and acceptability of the VoiS application, we will ask a diverse group of patients to use it in real-world settings and provide feedback on their experience. We will use this feedback to optimize tool performance, so that it can provide patients with an improved understanding of their chronic conditions. The VoiS app can also facilitate remote sharing of chronic disease control with healthcare providers, which can improve clinical efficacy and reduce the urgency and frequency of clinical care encounters. Because the VoiS app will be configured for use with multiple platforms, it will be more robust than existing systems with respect to user accessibility and acceptability.

Capturing the trend of mHealth research using text mining.

BACKGROUND: With the increasing development and use of mobile technologies, an increasing amount of research on mobile health is being conducted. The purpose of the study was to capture the trends in mHealth research by mining terms related to medical conditions, interventions, study populations, and the relationships between these terms. METHODS: This study analyzed 5,600 journal articles published in Web of Science from 2008 to 2018. Using text mining techniques, a total of 39,292 terms extracted from the titles and abstracts of the journal articles were independently reviewed to identify meaningful terms related to medical conditions, interventions, and study populations. RESULTS: A total of 48 different types of medical conditions were identified in the dataset. Mood disorders appeared to be the most frequently identified medical condition in mHealth research. Thirty interventions were identified. Cell phone-, SMS-, and Internet-based interventions appeared to be the most prominent types, and "female" appeared to be the most frequently identified term related to the studied population. Females appeared to have been studied in the widest range of medical conditions, including pregnancy issues, overnutrition, neoplasms, and AIDS. Older adults were the least studied population in mHealth. CONCLUSIONS: Knowledge gaps that have not been explored in previous studies in mHealth research were identified, which should be addressed by researchers.

Consumers' Use of UMLS Concepts on Social Media: Diabetes-Related Textual Data Analysis in Blog and Social Q&A Sites.

BACKGROUND: The widely known terminology gap between health professionals and health consumers hinders effective information seeking for consumers. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to better understand consumers' usage of medical concepts by evaluating the coverage of concepts and semantic types of the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) on diabetes-related postings in 2 types of social media: blogs and social question and answer (Q&A). METHODS: We collected 2 types of social media data: (1) a total of 3711 blogs tagged with "diabetes" on Tumblr posted between February and October 2015; and (2) a total of 58,422 questions and associated answers posted between 2009 and 2014 in the diabetes category of Yahoo! Answers. We analyzed the datasets using a widely adopted biomedical text processing framework Apache cTAKES and its extension YTEX. First, we applied the named entity recognition (NER) method implemented in YTEX to identify UMLS concepts in the datasets. We then analyzed the coverage and the popularity of concepts in the UMLS source vocabularies across the 2 datasets (ie, blogs and social Q&A). Further, we conducted a concept-level comparative coverage analysis between SNOMED Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT) and Open-Access Collaborative Consumer Health Vocabulary (OAC CHV)-the top 2 UMLS source vocabularies that have the most coverage on our datasets. We also analyzed the UMLS semantic types that were frequently observed in our datasets. RESULTS: We identified 2415 UMLS concepts from blog postings, 6452 UMLS concepts from social Q&A questions, and 10,378 UMLS concepts from the answers. The medical concepts identified in the blogs can be covered by 56 source vocabularies in the UMLS, while those in questions and answers can be covered by 58 source vocabularies. SNOMED CT was the dominant vocabulary in terms of coverage across all the datasets, ranging from 84.9% to 95.9%. It was followed by OAC CHV (between 73.5% and 80.0%) and Metathesaurus Names (MTH) (between 55.7% and 73.5%). All of the social media datasets shared frequent semantic types such as "Amino Acid, Peptide, or Protein," "Body Part, Organ, or Organ Component," and "Disease or Syndrome." CONCLUSIONS: Although the 3 social media datasets vary greatly in size, they exhibited similar conceptual coverage among UMLS source vocabularies and the identified concepts showed similar semantic type distributions. As such, concepts that are both frequently used by consumers and also found in professional vocabularies such as SNOMED CT can be suggested to OAC CHV to improve its coverage.

Relationships among communication competence, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction in Korean nurses working in the emergency medical center setting.

BACKGROUND: The communication competence of nurses working in emergency medical center settings is essential to establish a therapeutic nurse-patient relationship. Education and strategic development are required to improve the communication competence of emergency room (ER) nurses. PURPOSE: This study was conducted to determine the relationships among individual communication competence, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction in Korean nurses in the emergency medical center setting. METHODS: A cross-sectional descriptive design was adopted. The study sample included 214 nurses at 11 emergency medical centers in Seoul and Kyunggi-Do, Korea. Measures used included the Global Interpersonal Communication Competence, self-efficacy scale, and job satisfaction scale. The collected data were analyzed using the SPSS version 18.0 statistical software program and included descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, independent t test, analysis of variance, and Pearson's correlation coefficient). RESULTS: The degrees of communication competence and self-efficacy of ER nurses were good, with higher scores than the median values. However, the degree of job satisfaction was poor, indicating a lower score than the median value. Religious affiliation and previous participation in communication education each had a significant impact on communication competence. Religious affiliation and time of worse duty each had a significant impact on self-efficacy. Length of career (year) in the emergency medical center and type of hospital each had a significant impact on job satisfaction. Positive correlations were identified among communication competence, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction. CONCLUSIONS/IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: This study supported the presence of significant correlations among communication competence, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction. Thus, it is necessary to develop training programs that are customized to individual characteristics such as self-efficacy and job satisfaction to improve the communicative competence of ER nurses.

Cancer information seeking behaviors and information needs among Korean Americans.

Linguistically and culturally isolated Korean Americans have less access to health service and cancer screening tests than all U.S population. Lack of adequate cancer information is one of the barriers to undergoing cancer screening tests. It is necessary to understand their current cancer information-seeking behaviors and information needs if we are to more effectively provide adequate cancer information. The purpose of the study was to identify cancer information seeking behaviors and information needs among Korean Americans. Data were collected from one of the biggest websites for the Korean community in the USA. A total of 273 free-texts from January to June 2013 were reviewed and analyzed for this study. The extracted terms were categorized based on the coding system. The primary reason for asking questions was inquiry followed by sharing experiences. The main topics of the postings were categorized as medical or non-medical. In relation to types of cancer, breast cancer was the greatest concern. The findings from this study can help in establishing more effective strategies to provide better cancer information among Korean Americans by assessing their current cancer information seeking trends and information needs.