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. 2012 May 28;14(3):e77.
doi: 10.2196/jmir.2148.

A novel evaluation of World No Tobacco day in Latin America

John W Ayers  1 , Benjamin M Althouse, Jon-Patrick Allem, Daniel E Ford, Kurt M Ribisl, Joanna E Cohen
Affiliations

A novel evaluation of World No Tobacco day in Latin America

John W Ayers et al. J Med Internet Res. .

Abstract

Background: World No Tobacco Day (WNTD), commemorated annually on May 31, aims to inform the public about tobacco harms. Because tobacco control surveillance is usually annualized, the effectiveness of WNTD remains unexplored into its 25th year.

Objective: To explore the potential of digital surveillance (infoveillance) to evaluate the impacts of WNTD on population awareness of and interest in cessation.

Methods: Health-related news stories and Internet search queries were aggregated to form a continuous and real-time data stream. We monitored daily news coverage of and Internet search queries for cessation in seven Latin American nations from 2006 to 2011.

Results: Cessation news coverage peaked around WNTD, typically increasing 71% (95% confidence interval [CI] 61-81), ranging from 61% in Mexico to 83% in Venezuela. Queries indicative of cessation interest peaked on WNTD, increasing 40% (95% CI 32-48), ranging from 24% in Colombia to 84% in Venezuela. A doubling in cessation news coverage was associated with approximately a 50% increase in cessation queries. To gain a practical perspective, we compared WNTD-related activity with New Year's Day and several cigarette excise tax increases in Mexico. Cessation queries around WNTD were typically greater than New Year's Day and approximated a 2.8% (95% CI -0.8 to 6.3) increase in cigarette excise taxes.

Conclusions: This novel evaluation suggests WNTD had a significant impact on popular awareness (media trends) and individual interest (query trends) in smoking cessation. Because WNTD is constantly evolving, our work is also a model for real-time surveillance and potential improvement in WNTD and similar initiatives.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: JWA and BMA share an equity stake in a consulting group, Directing Medicine, that helps others implement some of the ideas embodied in this work. The data generation procedures, however, are not proprietary and rely on public archives. There are no other conflicts of interest relevant to this study.

Editorial note: This paper was originally peer-reviewed by another journal. JMIR reviewed the paper internally and accepted the peer-review reports and the authors' responses as forwarded by the author. Thus, the identity of the reviewers is not known to the editor.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Example World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) time trends in Mexico, 2006-2011. (A) Entire series by week, (B) entire weekly series with mean annualized estimate, and (C) daily series with mean estimates. Daily query estimates were restricted to 2010 and 2011 due to data unavailability.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Pooled estimates of World No Tobacco Day effectiveness in Latin America, 2006-2011. Estimates are made comparing the week of (and before and after) World No Tobacco Day with 12 weeks before and after that period.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Nation-specific estimates of World No Tobacco Day effectiveness in Latin America, 2006-2011. Dotted line indicates average effect for all nations and years as a reference point. Data were unavailable in Ecuador, Chile, and Columbia for 2006 and 2007.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Cessation news coverage is positively associated with cessation Internet search queries. Nodes are sized according to mean annual search query volume, with nodes by nation and year.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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