Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: One of the main goals of Cochrane is making high quality medical information accessible for the lay audience. This aim in Poland is mainly achieved by dissemination of Plain Language Summaries (PLS) using fanpages on Twitter and on Facebook.
Objective: To describe our experiences with dissemination of Cochrane evidence using social media and to explore the changes in the profile of followers, fans and topic preferences between the 2016 and 2020.
Methods: Cochrane Poland was established in 2015, as a Branch of the Nordic Cochrane Centre. Polish Facebook fanpage was started in March 2016, and Twitter profile 9 months later. PLS are translated by volunteers (including students taking part in educational project “Humanities for Health” at University of Warsaw) and their quality is ensured by medical editors also from the Jagiellonian University.
Results: Up to March 2020 Polish translations were available for 1033 PLS and 57% were promoted by fanpages. Initially the translations were done only by volunteers, also students and graduates of medicine from Jagiellonian University, Medical College. Subsequently within the project “Humanities for Health” we started cooperation with students at the Institute for English Studies, University of Warsaw. At the moment we also accept volunteers who sign up via join.cochrane.org website.
Since 2015 we cooperated with 161 volunteers and editors, some of them cooperate with us till now as permanent translating volunteers and editors.
Initially the highest percentage of disseminated PLSs was related to preventive medicine with a special focus on alternative medicine practices (e.g. acupuncture), nutrition, and children health. Negative feedback from our followers regarding posts about alternative medicine perceived as promotion of those practices even though those reviews were not reporting positive effect. Therefore we decided to change the profile of presented topics and started disseminating posts about medical interventions and specific drugs.
The profile of people following our posts changed over time, especially in the proportion of men and women and age. Our initial audience was younger, right now we have older audience (35 – 44 years old). On average the organic range of published information is doubled and reach about 350. Total page likes increased by 15% since 2019, similar increase was recorded on Twitter profile.
Conclusion: In Polish context comparable efforts on Facebook and Twitter provide more successful dissemination results in Facebook environment.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: We try to approach patient organisations to cooperate with us in dissemination of PLS. So far we have successful collaboration with cystic fibrosis patient organisation, for whom we prepare short texts about systematic reviews.
Objective: To describe our experiences with dissemination of Cochrane evidence using social media and to explore the changes in the profile of followers, fans and topic preferences between the 2016 and 2020.
Methods: Cochrane Poland was established in 2015, as a Branch of the Nordic Cochrane Centre. Polish Facebook fanpage was started in March 2016, and Twitter profile 9 months later. PLS are translated by volunteers (including students taking part in educational project “Humanities for Health” at University of Warsaw) and their quality is ensured by medical editors also from the Jagiellonian University.
Results: Up to March 2020 Polish translations were available for 1033 PLS and 57% were promoted by fanpages. Initially the translations were done only by volunteers, also students and graduates of medicine from Jagiellonian University, Medical College. Subsequently within the project “Humanities for Health” we started cooperation with students at the Institute for English Studies, University of Warsaw. At the moment we also accept volunteers who sign up via join.cochrane.org website.
Since 2015 we cooperated with 161 volunteers and editors, some of them cooperate with us till now as permanent translating volunteers and editors.
Initially the highest percentage of disseminated PLSs was related to preventive medicine with a special focus on alternative medicine practices (e.g. acupuncture), nutrition, and children health. Negative feedback from our followers regarding posts about alternative medicine perceived as promotion of those practices even though those reviews were not reporting positive effect. Therefore we decided to change the profile of presented topics and started disseminating posts about medical interventions and specific drugs.
The profile of people following our posts changed over time, especially in the proportion of men and women and age. Our initial audience was younger, right now we have older audience (35 – 44 years old). On average the organic range of published information is doubled and reach about 350. Total page likes increased by 15% since 2019, similar increase was recorded on Twitter profile.
Conclusion: In Polish context comparable efforts on Facebook and Twitter provide more successful dissemination results in Facebook environment.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: We try to approach patient organisations to cooperate with us in dissemination of PLS. So far we have successful collaboration with cystic fibrosis patient organisation, for whom we prepare short texts about systematic reviews.