U.S. medical student knowledge and interest in asylum seeker medical care.

CONTEXT: Asylum seekers face significant and unique healthcare challenges, requiring healthcare practitioners, specifically in primary care, to be trained to care for this patient population. However, there is limited understanding of medical students' interest in and future ability to care for the population of asylum seekers in the United States. PROJECT AIMS: We aim to understand U.S. medical students' interest, experience, and knowledge in providing care for asylum seekers to assess the need for change in the ways in which medical schools introduce asylum seeker care to learners. DESCRIPTION: A 23-question survey was administered to U.S. medical students at four institutions with asylum programmes affiliated with Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) from June 2020 to March 2021, querying various aspects of providing care to asylum seekers. OUTCOMES: Of the approximately 2846 students who received the survey, 436 students (15%) completed it in its entirety. Most respondents desired training about caring for asylum seekers (91%). Over half (52%) rated their knowledge of asylum issues overall as 'poor' or 'none', and 73% thought their medical school's curriculum on asylum seeker health needed improvement. CONCLUSIONS: Medical students at schools with affiliated asylum clinics desire to care for asylum seeker patients but feel unprepared to do so, highlighting an unmet need for formal asylum education in U.S. medical schools.

Contraceptive content shared on social media: an analysis of Twitter.

BACKGROUND: Information on social media may affect peoples' contraceptive decision making. We performed an exploratory analysis of contraceptive content on Twitter (recently renamed X), a popular social media platform. METHODS: We selected a random subset of 1% of publicly available, English-language tweets related to reversible, prescription contraceptive methods posted between January 2014 and December 2019. We oversampled tweets for the contraceptive patch to ensure at least 200 tweets per method. To create the codebook, we identified common themes specific to tweet content topics, tweet sources, and tweets soliciting information or providing advice. All posts were coded by two team members, and differences were adjudicated by a third reviewer. Descriptive analyses were reported with accompanying qualitative findings. RESULTS: During the study period, 457,369 tweets about reversible contraceptive methods were published, with a random sample of 4,434 tweets used for final analysis. Tweets most frequently discussed contraceptive method decision-making (26.7%) and side effects (20.5%), particularly for long-acting reversible contraceptive methods and the depot medroxyprogesterone acetate shot. Tweets about logistics of use or adherence were common for short-acting reversible contraceptives. Tweets were frequently posted by contraceptive consumers (50.6%). A small proportion of tweets explicitly requested information (6.2%) or provided advice (4.2%). CONCLUSIONS: Clinicians should be aware that individuals are exposed to information through Twitter that may affect contraceptive perceptions and decision making, particularly regarding long-acting reversible contraceptives. Social media is a valuable source for studying contraceptive beliefs missing in traditional health research and may be used by professionals to disseminate accurate contraceptive information.