Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction/Aim: Disease awareness days are numerous and varied [1]. In the present study we tried to assess the short-term impact of the 2017 diabetes awareness day in Greece by examining localized relevant internet-based searches.

Materials/Methods: We collected data from Google Trends^TM regarding relative [internet] search volumes (RSVs) with key words “diabetes” (in Greek and English; study group) and “breast cancer” (also in Greek and English; control group). We collected only data from Greece from the seventh day preceding Diabetes Awareness Day (DAD; November 14, 2017) and Breast Cancer Awareness Day (BCAD; October 25, 2017) till the seventh day following these days. Comparisons of RSVs of the days preceding and following DAD and BCAD were done with the Wilcoxon paired test and the Sign test (statistical significance was set at P<0.05).

Results: There were significantly more RSVs for diabetes than breast cancer (P=0.001, Wilcoxon test) and significantly more RSVs in the days preceding than the days following DAD or BCAD (P=0.016, Sign test).

Discussion/Conclusion: Diabetes was interestingly more popular in internet searches than breast cancer. Apparently diabetes is more diversified as a search term than breast cancer (a lot of its internet searches concern diet, recipes and lifestyle modifications) and this may - partially - explain its predominance. However, more RSVs were noted before than after DDF or BCAD; this finding may indicate a lower than anticipated effectiveness of these disease awareness days and lends credence to their critics [2].

References:

[1]. Cragg L, Nutland W. Health promotion practice. 2nd Ed. Maidenhead: Open University Press – McGraw Hill, 2015.

[2]. Purtle J, Roman LA. Health Awareness Days: Sufficient Evidence to Support the Craze? Am J Public Health 2015; 105: 1061–1065.