Home Novel Data Sources for Women's Health Research
Post
Cancel

Novel Data Sources for Women's Health Research

Posted Aug 31, 2014 Updated Apr 10, 2023
By Soudabeh Fazeli Dehkordy MD MPH , Ruth C. Carlos MD MS , Kelli S. Hall PhD MS , Vanessa K. Dalton MD MPH
6 min read

Rationale and Objectives

Millions of people use online search engines everyday to find health-related information and voluntarily share their personal health status and behaviors in various Web sites. Thus, data from tracking of online information seeker’s behavior offer potential opportunities for use in public health surveillance and research. Google Trends is a feature of Google which allows Internet users to graph the frequency of searches for a single term or phrase over time or by geographic region. We used Google Trends to describe patterns of information-seeking behavior in the subject of dense breasts and to examine their correlation with the passage or introduction of dense breast notification legislation.

Materials and Methods

To capture the temporal variations of information seeking about dense breasts, the Web search query “dense breast” was entered in the Google Trends tool. We then mapped the dates of legislative actions regarding dense breasts that received widespread coverage in the lay media to information-seeking trends about dense breasts over time.

Results

Newsworthy events and legislative actions appear to correlate well with peaks in search volume of “dense breast”. Geographic regions with the highest search volumes have passed, denied, or are currently considering the dense breast legislation.

Conclusions

Our study demonstrated that any legislative action and respective news coverage correlate with increase in information seeking for “dense breast” on Google, suggesting that Google Trends has the potential to serve as a data source for policy-relevant research.

Widespread access to the Internet in last few decades has made online social media and digital technologies one of the major sources of public information. Millions of people use online search engines (eg, Google) everyday to find health-related information and voluntarily share their personal health status and behaviors in various Web sites (social networking sites, online disease support groups, and so forth.). Such data from tracking of online information seeker’s behavior offer potential opportunities for use in public health surveillance and research . A specific example of this is the examination of Google use patterns to understand timely public health issues including infectious disease hotspots, as has been shown in influenza .

Google Trends (available at http://google.com/trends/ ) is a feature of Google which allows Internet users to graph the frequency of searches for a single term or phrase. The fluctuations in the graph reflect changes in information seekers’ querying or use of the search term over time. Google Trends further provides options to compare graphs for different search terms or analyze regional differences for a specific term. Google Trends (or Google insights, the previous similar Google tool) has been primarily used as a real-time surveillance system for tracking infectious diseases such as Lyme disease , tuberculosis , and dengue . Although Google Trends has potential implications for as a tool for surveillance and research on a variety of health topics, search query surveillance for noninfectious diseases such as chronic disease or preventive health issues , and especially for women’s health issues, has not been widely used. Therefore, we sought to demonstrate the use of Google Trends evaluating a current “hot topic” in women’s health—breast cancer screening.

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Materials and methods

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Figure 1, Google Trends output for Web search queries for the term “breast cancer” in the United States from January 2004 to January 2014. Top : Search volume graph over time. Within each year, the peak search volume for “breast cancer” occurs in October, coinciding with Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Bottom : Heat map and ranked list indicating regional interest during the entire period considered.

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Figure 2, (a) Google queries for ‘‘dense breast’’ in the United States from January 2004 to June 2013. The x axis represents time covering 2004–2013 and the y axis represents mean search volume (with 100 being the peak volume for any time point). Arrows represent noteworthy events that correspond to peaks in search volume for “dense breast”. These events by date of occurrence are as follows: January 2007: Boyd et al. (11) showed that women with higher breast density have more likelihood of breast cancer (20 21) ; October 2009: Connecticut law legislating dense breast communication went to effect (12) ; October 2011: Dense breast notification legislation was introduced at federal level (12) ; July 2012: New York dense breast communication bill was enacted (12) ; and March 2013: California dense breast communication law went to effect (12) . (b) Google query volume for ‘‘dense breast’’ in different states of the United State from January 2004 to June 2013; 0–100 represents relative search volume. (c) States with the highest search volumes and their status of dense breast legislation.

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Results

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Discussion

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Conclusions

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

Get Radiology Tree app to read full this article<

References

  • 1. Eysenbach G.: Infodemiology and infoveillance tracking online health information and cyberbehavior for public health. Am J Prev Med 2011; 40: pp. S154-S158. PMID: 21521589

  • 2. Chew C., Eysenbach G.: Pandemics in the age of Twitter: content analysis of Tweets during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak. PLoS One 2010; 5: pp. e14118. PMID: 21124761

  • 3. Ginsberg J., Mohebbi M.H., Patel R.S., et. al.: Detecting influenza epidemics using search engine query data. Nature 2009; 457: pp. 1012-1014. PMID: 19020500

  • 4. Valdivia A., Lopez-Alcalde J., Vicente M., et. al.: Monitoring influenza activity in Europe with Google Flu Trends: comparison with the findings of sentinel physician networks - results for 2009-10. Euro Surveill 2010 Jul 22; 15: PMID: 20667303

  • 5. Seifter A., Schwarzwalder A., Geis K., et. al.: The utility of “Google Trends” for epidemiological research: Lyme disease as an example. Geospat health 2010; 4: pp. 135-137. PMID: 20503183

  • 6. Zhou X., Ye J., Feng Y.: Tuberculosis surveillance by analyzing Google Trends. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng 2011 Aug; 58: PMID: 21435969

  • 7. Althouse B.M., Ng Y.Y., Cummings D.A.: Prediction of dengue incidence using search query surveillance. PLoS Negl Trop Dis 2011; 5: e1258. PMID: 21829744

  • 8. Ayers J.W., Althouse B.M., Allem J.P., et. al.: Seasonality in seeking mental health information on Google. Am J Prev Med 2013; 44: pp. 520-525. PMID: 23597817

  • 9. Ayers J.W., Ribisl K.M., Brownstein J.S.: Tracking the rise in popularity of electronic nicotine delivery systems (electronic cigarettes) using search query surveillance. Am J Prev Med 2011; 40: pp. 448-453. PMID: 21406279

  • 10. Ayers J.W., Althouse B.M., Allem J.P., et. al.: A novel evaluation of World No Tobacco day in Latin America. J Med Internet Res 2012; 14: pp. e77. PMID: 22634568

  • 11. Boyd N.F., Guo H., Martin L.J., et. al.: Mammographic density and the risk and detection of breast cancer. N Engl J Med 2007; 356: pp. 227-236. PMID: 17229950

  • 12. Dehkordy S.F., Carlos R.: Dense breast legislation in the United States: state of the states. J Am Coll Radiol 2013; 10: pp. 899-902. PMID: 24295937

  • 13. Huang J., Zheng R., Emery S.: Assessing the impact of the national smoking ban in indoor public places in china: evidence from quit smoking related online searches. PLoS One 2013; 8: pp. e65577. PMID: 23776504

  • 14. New law may help women with dense breasts. NBC Connecticut. Available at: http://goo.gl/11dcZ . Accessed July, 2013.

  • 15. Vozzella L. Breast-density bill to become law in Virginia. The Washington Post. Available at: http://goo.gl/BgL0D . Accessed July, 2013.

  • 16. NY bill would notify women of dense breast tissue. CBS. Available at: http://goo.gl/0PDwH . Accessed July, 2013.

  • 17. Grady D. New laws add a divisive component to breast screening. The New York Times. Available at: http://goo.gl/FHSrB . Accessed July, 2013.

  • 18. Hutchison C. Should women be warned about breast density? Docs Weigh In. ABC News. Available at: http://goo.gl/K3vda . Accessed July, 2013.

  • 19. Colliver V. New mammography law on breast density. San Francisco Chronicle. Available at: http://goo.gl/dcSnY . Accessed July, 2013.

  • 20. Hitti M. Breast density, cancer risk?.CBCNEWS. Available at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/17/health/webmd/main2369559.shtml . Accessed July, 2013.

  • 21. Dense breast tissue hikes risk of cancer. Available at: NBCNews. http://goo.gl/M2Up6 . Accessed July, 2013.

Academic Radiology, Volume 21, Issue 9
Journals General Radiology
This post is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by the author.
Recently Updated
Contents