Physicians should utilize Facebook, YouTube to educate patients with food allergies

Researchers are encouraging health care providers to use YouTube and Facebook to address gaps in quality food allergy education, according to studies presented at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Annual Meeting.

Mossab Mohameden, MBBCh, and Charl Khalil, MD, and colleagues, explained that both social media platforms present a huge opportunity for allergists and immunologists to educate patients.

"Facebook is the most popular and frequent used social media website in U.S.," Mohameden and colleagues wrote in their abstract. "One-third of American adults reported using social network sites, such as Facebook or Twitter as a source of health information."

Khalil and colleagues highlighted that patient education is an important part of managing food allergies.

"Incorrect or incomplete information can lead to unnecessary and avoidable complications,” they wrote in their abstract. “Patients use the Internet, specifically YouTube, for instantaneous learning."

Mohameden, a clinical research fellow Cleveland Clinic Florida, and colleagues assessed the quality of Facebook pages for food allergy education.

They analyzed the 10 most popular Facebook pages that provided food allergy education by various categories, including patient education, research news, event announcement, legislative updates and food ingredient alerts. They graded the pages for quality content with a 0 to 9 score system.

Results showed that most pages were managed by patient advocate organizations; only one was managed by an allergy practice. The pages had an average quality score of 7.1.

The posts were composed of 29% patient education, 5% research news, 37% event announcements or advertisements and 9% legislative updates.

"In spite of the wide popularity of Facebook, only a minority of the pages on food allergy contained patient education information," Mohameden and colleagues wrote. "A paucity of research news was likely related to low engagement by allergists/immunologists. Professional use of Facebook by allergists/immunologists for patient education and sharing research news should be encouraged and its implications explored."

Khalil, also at the Cleveland Clinic Florida, and colleagues investigated the quality of YouTube videos for food allergy education.

They categorized and graded videos found by searching YouTube for 'food allergy' and the top eight food allergens.

The phrase 'food allergy' returned 50,000 videos, which were just over 9 minutes long, with 99,690 views, 1,188 likes and 26.5 dislikes, on average. Khalil and colleagues reported that 45% of the videos were rated useful.

When including all allergens, 54% of the videos were rated useful, 16% were irrelevant and 8% misleading. The videos with the highest reliability scores were uploaded by health care organizations, which comprised 9% of the videos.

The researchers found that the most viewed videos were on wheat and fish allergies. Peanut and shellfish allergy videos had the most reliable scores, while fish and soy allergy videos had the least reliable scores.

"There is a quality gap in patient education videos on food allergy," Khalil and colleagues wrote. "It needs to be addressed by health care professionals to achieve quality education and avoid misinformation and potential complications." – by Chelsea Frajerman Pardes

Disclosures: Healio Internal Medicine could not confirm relevant financial disclosures at the time of publication.

Reference:

Khalil C, et al. Paper 521. Presented at: American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Annual Meeting; March 4-7, 2016; Los Angeles.

Mohameden M, et al. Paper 303. Presented at: American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Annual Meeting; March 4-7, 2016; Los Angeles.