Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has increasingly supported research in digital health technologies to advance research and deliver behavior change interventions. We highlight some of the research supported by the NIH in eHealth, mHealth, and social media as well as research resources supported by the NIH to accelerate research in this area. We also describe some of the challenges and opportunities in the digital health field and the need to balance the promise of these technologies with rigorous scientific evidence.

Keywords

eHealth health informatics health policy mHealth social media

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Broniatowski

D. A.

Jamison

A. M.

Lulwah

Chen

Benton

. . . Dredze

(2018). Weaponized health communication: Twitter bots and Russian trolls amplify the vaccine debate. American Journal of Public Health, 108, 1378-1384. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2018.304567

Campbell

A. N.

Nunes

E. V.

Matthews

A. G.

Stitzer

Miele

G. M.

Polsky

. . . Ghitza

U. E.

(2014). Internet-delivered treatment for substance abuse: A multi-site randomized controlled trial. American Journal of Psychiatry, 171, 683-690.

Cavazos-Rehg

P. A.

Krauss

M. J.

Spitznagel

E. L.

Grucza

R. A.

Bierut

L. J.

(2013). Hazards of new media: Youth’s exposure to tobacco ads/promotions. Nicotine and Tobacco Research, 16, 437-444.

Chew

Eysenbach

(2010). Pandemics in the age of Twitter: Content analysis of Tweets during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak. PLoS One, 5, e14118.

Chou

W. S.

Klein

W. M. P.

(2018). Addressing health-related misinformation on social media. Journal of the American Medical Association. Advance online publication. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.16865.

Cline

R. J.

Haynes

K. M.

(2001). Consumer health information seeking on the Internet: The state of the art. Health Education and Research, 16, 671-692.

Comerford

Fogel

Bailey

J. R.

Chilukuri

Chalasani

Lammert

C. S.

(2018). Leveraging social networking sites for an autoimmune hepatitis genetic repository: Pilot study to evaluate feasibility. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 20, e14.

Cornet

V. P.

Holden

R. J.

(2018). Systematic review of smartphone-based passive sensing for health and wellbeing. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 77, 120-132.

Cuijpers

van Straten

Andersson

(2008). Internet-administered cognitive behavior therapy for health problems: A systematic review. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 31, 169-177. doi:10.1007/s10865-007-9144-1

10.

Direito

Carraca

Rawstorn

Whittaker

Maddison

(2017). mHealth technologies to influence physical activity and sedentary behaviors: Behavior change techniques, systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 51, 226-239. doi:10.1007/s12160-016-9846-0

11.

Eysenbach

(2000). Consumer health informatics. British Medical Journal, 320, 1713-1716.

12.

Hernandez Silva

Lawler

Langbecker

. (2019). The effectiveness of mHealth for self-management in improving pain, psychological distress, fatigue, and sleep in cancer survivors, a systematic review. Journal of Cancer Survivorship, 13, 97-107. doi:10.1007/s11764-018-0730-8

13.

Hunter

R. F.

Gough

O’Kane

McKeown

Fitzpatrick

Walker

. . . Kee

(2018). Ethical issues in social media research for public health. American Journal of Public Health, 108, 343-348. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2017.304249

14.

Ireland

M. E.

Schwartz

H. A.

Chen

Ungar

L. H.

Albarracín

(2015). Future-oriented tweets predict lower county-level HIV prevalence in the United States. Health Psychology, 34(Suppl.), 1252-1260.

15.

Kirchner

T. R.

Shiffman

(2016). Spatio-temporal determinants of mental health and well-being: Advances in geographically-explicit ecological momentary assessment (GEMA). Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 51, 1221-1223. doi:10.1007/s00127-016-1277-5

16.

Kuhl

E. A.

Sears

S. F.

Conti

J. B.

(2006). Internet-based behavioral change and psychosocial care for patients with cardiovascular disease: A review of cardiac disease-specific applications. Heart & Lung, 35, 374-382.

17.

Kumar

Nilsen

W. J.

Abernethy

Atienza

Patrick

Pavel

. . . Swendeman

(2013). Mobile health technology evaluation: The mHealth evidence workshop. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 45, 228-236.

18.

Lienemann

B. A.

Unger

J. B.

Cruz

T. B.

Chu

K. H.

(2017). Methods for coding tobacco-related Twitter data: A systematic review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 19(3), e91. doi:10.2196/jmir.7022

19.

Lowe

H. J.

Lomax

E. C.

Polonkey

S. E.

(1996). The World Wide Web: A review of an emerging internet-based technology for the distribution of biomedical information. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 3(1), 1-14.

20.

Martinez-Perez

de la Torre-Diez

Lopez-Coronado

(2015). Privacy and security in mobile health apps: A review and recommendations. Journal of Medical Systems, 39(1), 181. doi:10.1007/s10916-014-0181-3

21.

McCarroll

Eyles

Mhurchu

(2017). Effectiveness of mobile health (mHealth) interventions for promoting healthy eating in adults: A systematic review. Preventive Medicine, 105, 156-168. doi:10.1016/j.ypmed.2017.08.02

22.

Nahum-Shani

Smith

S. N.

Spring

B. J.

Collins

L. M.

Witkiewitz

Tewari

Murphy

S. A.

(2018). Just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs) in mobile health: Key components and design principles for ongoing health behavior support. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 52, 446-462. doi:10.1007/s12160-016-9830-8

23.

Newport

(2017). Americans’ confidence in institutions edges up. Retrieved from http://news.gallup.com/poll/212840/americans-confidence-institutions-edges.aspx

24.

Norman

G. J.

Zabinski

M. F.

Adams

M. A.

Rosenberg

D. E.

Yaroch

A. L.

Atienza

A. A.

(2007). A review of eHealth interventions for physical activity and dietary behavior change. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 33, 336-345.

25.

Pear Therapeutics. (2019). Sandoz and Pear Therapeutics announce US launch of reSET-O™ to help treat opioid use disorder. Retrieved from https://peartherapeutics.com/sandoz-and-pear-therapeutics-announce-us-launch-of-reset-o-to-help-treat-opioid-use-disorder/

26.

Pechmann

Delucchi

Lakon

C. M.

Prochaska

J. J.

(2017). Randomised controlled trial evaluation of Tweet2Quit: A social network quit-smoking intervention. Tobacco Control, 26, 188-194.

27.

Pew Research Center. (2017). News use across social media platforms 2017. Retrieved from http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2017/09/13163032/PJ_17.08.23_socialMediaUpdate_FINAL.pdf

28.

Pew Research Center. (2018a). Mobile fact sheet. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/mobile/

29.

Pew Research Center. (2018b). Social media use in 2018. Retrieved from https://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/

30.

Pew Research Center. (2018c). Teens, social media & technology 2018. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/05/31/teens-social-media-technology-2018/

31.

Preston

Brown

F. W.

Hartley

(1992). Using telemedicine to improve healthcare in distant areas. Hospital and Community Psychiatry, 43(1), 25-32.

32.

Riley

W. T.

(2016). A new era of clinical research methods in a data-rich environment. In Hesse

B. W.

Ahern

D. K.

Beckjord

(Eds.), Oncology informatics (pp. 343-355). Cambridge, MA: Elsevier.

33.

Riley

W. T.

Glasgow

R. E.

Etheredge

Abernethy

A. P.

(2013). Rapid, responsive, relevant (R3) research: A call for a rapid learning health research enterprise. Clinical and Translational Medicine, 2, 10. doi:10.1186/2001-1326-2-10

34.

Rogers

E. M.

(2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). New York, NY: Free Press.

35.

Scott-Sheldon

L. A.

Lantini

Jennings

E. G.

Thind

Rosen

R. K.

Salmiorago-Blotcher

Bock

B. C.

(2016). Test messaging-based interventions for smoking cessation: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JMIR Mhealth UHealth, 4(2), e49. doi:10.2916/mhealth.5436.

36.

Sharpe

J. D.

Hopkins

R. S.

Cook

R. L.

Striley

C. W.

(2016). Evaluating Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia as tools for influenza surveillance using Bayesian change point analysis: A comparative analysis. JMIR Public Health Surveillance, 2(2), e161.

37.

Shiffman

Stone

A. A.

Hufford

M. R.

(2008). Ecological momentary assessment. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 4, 1-32.

38.

Statista Portal. (2018a). Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide as of 3rd quarter 2018 (in millions). Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/

39.

Statista Portal. (2018b). Number of monthly active Twitter users in the United States from 1st quarter 2010 to 3rd quarter 2018 (in millions). Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/274564/monthly-active-twitter-users-in-the-united-states/

40.

U.S. Food & Drug Administration. (2019). Mobile medical applications. https://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/DigitalHealth/MobileMedicalApplications/default.htm

41.

Volkow

N. D.

Koob

G. F.

Croyle

R. T.

Bianchi

D. W.

Gordon

J. A.

Koroschetz

W. J.

. . . Weiss

S. R. B.

(2018). The conception of the ABCD study: From substance use to a broad NIH collaboration. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 32, 4-7. doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2017.10.002

42.

Vosoughi

Roy

Aral

(2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359, 1146-1151. doi:10.1126/science.aap9559

43.

Wagner

Liu

Shaw

S. D.

Iakovlev

Zhou

Harrington

. . . Nahum-Shani

(2017). eWrapper: Operationalizing engagement strategies in mHealth. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, 2017, 790-798. doi:10.1145/3123024.3125612.

44.

Wang

Xue

Huang

Zhang

(2017). A systematic review of application and effectiveness of mHealth interventions for obesity and diabetes treatment and self-management. Advances in Nutrition, 8, 449-462. doi:10.3945/an.116.014100

45.

Williams

H. T. P.

McMurray

J. R.

Kurz

Lambert

F. H.

(2015). Network analysis reveals open forums and echo chambers in social media discussions of climate change. Global Environmental Change, 32, 126-138.

46.

Young

S. D.

Cumberland

W. G.

Lee

S. J.

Jaganath

Szekeres

Coates

(2013). Social networking technologies as an emerging tool for HIV prevention: A cluster randomized trial. Annals of Internal Medicine, 159, 318-324. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-159-5-201309030-00005

National Institutes of Health Support of Digital Health Behavior Research

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References