The greater percentage of people in a city that list a healthy, active lifestyle under their Facebook interests, the lower that area's obesity rates are, a new study suggests.
The study, led by by Rumi Chunara, PhD, and John Brownstein, PhD, of Boston Children's Hospital's Informatics Program (CHIP), and published in PLOS ONE examined geo-tagged Facebook user data and data from national and New York City-focused health surveys.
The findings imply that knowing people's online interests within different geographical regions can aid public health investigators to predict, monitor and categorize obesity rates down to the neighborhood level, and present an opportunity to make geo-targeted online interventions focused on decreasing obesity rates.
The data that are accessible from social networks such as Facebook make it easy to accurately conduct research cohorts of a large size that would otherwise be unobtainable. They allow for more detailed research into the influence of the societal environment on health issues like obesity. Research of this type can sometimes be difficult because of several factors: costgathering a big enough sample sizeslow pace of data analysisuse of traditional reporting and surveillance systemsAccording to Brownstein, who runs the Computational Epidemiology Group within CHIP :
"Online social networks like Facebook represent a new high-value, low-cost data stream for looking at health at a population level. The tight correlation between Facebook users' interests and obesity data suggest that this kind of social network analysis could help generate real-time estimates of obesity levels in an area, help target public health campaigns that would promote healthy behavior change, and assess the success of those campaigns."
The researchers collected aggregated Facebook user interest data - what users post to their timeline, "like", and share with others on Facebook - from users all around the U.S. and just New York City. Then they compared the percentages of users who showed an interest in healthy activities or TV shows with data from two telephone-based health surveys: the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System-Selected Metropolitan/Micropolitan Area Risk Trends (BRFSS-SMART), and New York City's EpiQuery Community Health Survey (CHS).
Results revealed close relationships between obesity rates and Facebook interests. For example, the obesity rates from BRFSS-SMART were 12% lower in the parts of the U.S. where the highest percentage of Facebook users documented activity-related interests (Coeur d'Alene, Idaho), compared with locations with the lowest percentage (Kansas City, Mo.-Kan.).
Additionally, the obesity rate in the location with the highest percentage of users with television-related interests across the U.S. (Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, S.C.) was 3.9 percent greater than the location with the lowest percentage (Eugene-Springfield, Ore.).
Among the data from New York City neighborhoods, a similar outcome was seen, proving that the findings can range from national to local level data. The obesity rate on Coney Island was the highest rate of activity-related interests in the city and was 7.2% lower than Southwest Queens - the area with the lowest percentage.
The neighborhood with the highest percentage of television-related interests, Northeast Bronx, had considerably higher obesity rates than in the neighborhood with the lowest percentage (Greenpoint).
Chunara, an instructor in Brownstein's group concluded:
"The data show that in places where Facebook users have more activity-related interests, there is a lower prevalence of obesity and overweight. They reveal how social media data can augment public health surveillance by giving public health researchers access to population-level information that they can't otherwise get."
Other studies have also revealed that Facebook can be useful for other types of research. For instance a study by the University of Missouri suggests that Facebook activity can reveal clues about mental illness.
Written by Kelly Fitzgerald
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today
Rumi Chunara, Lindsay Bouton, John W. Ayers, John S. Brownstein
PLoS One, April 2013 Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:
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30 Apr. 2013.
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'Facebook May Be Useful Indicator For Tracking Obesity'
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