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. 2025 Jan 6;10(1):23814683241309652.
doi: 10.1177/23814683241309652. eCollection 2025 Jan-Jun.

Dissemination of Decision Aids about Hip and Knee Osteoarthritis to Spanish-Speaking Adults through Social Media

K D Valentine  1   2 , Felisha Marques  1 , Antonia F Chen  3 , Leigh Simmons  1 , Karen R Sepucha  1   2
Affiliations

Dissemination of Decision Aids about Hip and Knee Osteoarthritis to Spanish-Speaking Adults through Social Media

K D Valentine et al. MDM Policy Pract. .

Abstract

Background: Older adults and Hispanic individuals are increasingly turning to social media platforms to access health-related information. The purpose of this project was to evaluate a social media campaign to disseminate information from decision aids (DAs) on hip and knee osteoarthritis to Spanish-speaking adults.

Methods: A social media marketing team helped create an 8-mo campaign posted across 3 social media platforms to promote visits to a Web site offering free multilingual DAs for treatment of hip or knee osteoarthritis. Eight videos featuring Spanish-speaking actors discussing DAs were boosted (i.e., money was paid so posts landed on user's feeds). In this observational study, metrics tracked reach, extended engagement, and number of users accessing the Web site. Videos were qualitatively coded for themes, including pain and benefits of treatment options; biserial correlations assessed relationships between the presence of a code and the metrics. We calculated cost per visitor using the total campaign cost and number of users accessing the Web site.

Results: During the campaign, boosted videos reached 83,937 users. Of the users, 22,777 had extended engagement with the videos, and 1,835 users visited our Web site with access to the DAs. Videos that included themes of pain tended to reach more users (r = 0.88) and have higher engagement (r = 0.70). When videos included the theme of benefits of treatment, more users tended to visit our Web site (r = 0.78). The total campaign cost was $25,950, making the cost per Web site visitor $14.14.

Conclusions: Social media was a useful, inexpensive tool for disseminating health care information on hip and knee osteoarthritis DAs to predominantly Spanish-speaking adults. Further work should identify how exposure to such social media content affects a viewer's health care attitudes, health care behaviors, and surgical decision making.

Highlights: An 8-mo social media campaign was able to reach more than 83,000 users and result in almost 2,000 users accessing a Web site with multilingual decision aids.Social media may be an inexpensive tool for disseminating health care information such as decision aids to Spanish-speaking adults.

Keywords: decision aids; decision support; older adults; osteoarthritis; shared decision making; social media; spanish-speaking.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: KS, KDV, and FM report receiving support from the Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation for the project. AFC reports royalties from Stryker; is a paid consultant for Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Avanos, BICMD, Convatec, Ethicon, Heraeus, IrriMax, Osteal Therapeutics, Peptilogics, Pfizer, Smith and Nephew, Stryker, and TrialSpark; holds stock or stock options in Hyalex, Irrimax, Osteal Therapeutics, Sonoran, IlluminOss; received research support (outside of this project) from Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Elute, Peptilogics, Sectra; received support from SLACK Incorporated, UpToDate, Taylor & Francis Group, and Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery; engaged in editorial participation at the Journal of Arthroplasty, Journal of Bone and Joint Infection, Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, and Arthroplasty Today; and has board appointments at the American Joint Replacement Registry and American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons. KS reports research funding to her institution from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, National Institute on Aging, National Cancer Institute, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, outside the submitted work. LS reports no conflicts of interest. The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The study was funded through an R3 mechanism from the Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation. The funding agreement ensured the authors’ independence in designing the study, interpreting the data, writing, and publishing the report.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Reach, engagement, and extended engagement over time.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Clicks and Web site users over time.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Image indicating which themes were present or absent in each video.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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