Assessing the effectiveness of disease awareness programs: Evidence from Google Trends data for the world awareness dates

Objectives: The process of disease awareness distribution on the web was studied. The contribution of WHO world awareness days to the total awareness process over the intemet was investigated. Methods: A system dynamics model for disease awareness distribution process online was proposed. The model results were compared to empirical data from Google Trends. The data were utilized to examine the number of disease-related search queries which have world awareness days dedicated to them. Among these diseases, online queries for AIDS, tuberculosis, breast cancer and autism depicted considerable increases during the world awareness dates, which were used to calibrate the model. Results: Awareness distribution process for AIDS and tuberculosis as contagious diseases, were much faster than the other two non-contagious diseases. The information sharing process for these diseases was so fast that a sudden fall in the number of search queries was observable in a few years. Conclusions: Our results illustrate that for contagious diseases, the WHO program was most effective in initiating the awareness process, while for non-contagious ones it had a consistent influence throughout. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.