Vasconcellos-Silva Paulo Roberto, Carvalho Dárlinton Barbosa Feres, Trajano Valéria, de La Rocque Lucia Rodriguez, Sawada Anunciata Cristina Marins Braz, Juvanhol Leidjaira Lopes
Laboratory of Innovation in Therapies, Teaching and Bioproducts /LITEBOswaldo Cruz Institute/IOCOswaldo Cruz FoundationRio de JaneiroBrazil.
Research CoordinationNational Cancer InstituteRio de JaneiroBrazil.
JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2017 Apr 6;3(2):e17. doi: 10.2196/publichealth.7015.
One of the major challenges of the Brazilian Ministry of Health is to foster interest in breast cancer screening (BCS), especially among women at high risk. Strategies have been developed to promote the early identification of breast cancer mainly by Pink October campaigns. The massive number of queries conducted through Google creates traffic data that can be analyzed to show unrevealed interest cycles and their seasonalities.
Using Google Trends, we studied cycles of public interest in queries toward mammography and breast cancer along the last 5 years. We hypothesize that these data may be correlated with collective interest cycles leveraged by national BCS campaigns such as Pink October.
Google Trends was employed to normalize traffic data on a scale from 0 (<1% of the peak volume) to 100 (peak of traffic) presented as weekly relative search volume (RSV) concerning mammography and breast cancer as search terms. A time series covered the last 261 weeks (November 2011 to October 2016), and RSV of both terms were compared with their respective annual means. Polynomial trendlines (second order) were employed to estimate overall trends.
We found an upward trend for both terms over the 5 years, with almost parallel trendlines. Remarkable peaks were found along Pink October months- mammography and breast cancer searches were leveraged up reaching, respectively, 119.1% (2016) and 196.8% (2015) above annual means. Short downward RSVs along December-January months were also noteworthy along all the studied period. These trends traced an N-shaped pattern with higher peaks in Pink October months and sharp falls along subsequent December and January.
Considering these findings, it would be reasonable to bring Pink October to the beginning of each year, thereby extending the beneficial effect of the campaigns. It would be more appropriate to start screening campaigns at the beginning of the year, when new resolutions are taken and new projects are added to everyday routines. Our work raises attention to the study of traffic data to encourage health campaign analysts to undertake better analysis based on marketing practices.
巴西卫生部面临的主要挑战之一是提高对乳腺癌筛查（BCS）的关注度，尤其是在高危女性群体中。已制定策略主要通过“粉红十月”活动来促进乳腺癌的早期发现。通过谷歌进行的大量查询产生了流量数据，这些数据可用于分析，以揭示潜在的兴趣周期及其季节性。
利用谷歌趋势，我们研究了过去5年中公众对乳房X光检查和乳腺癌查询的兴趣周期。我们假设这些数据可能与诸如“粉红十月”等全国性乳腺癌筛查活动所利用的集体兴趣周期相关。
使用谷歌趋势将流量数据标准化，范围从0（低于峰值流量的1%）到100（流量峰值），以乳房X光检查和乳腺癌作为搜索词的每周相对搜索量（RSV）呈现。时间序列涵盖过去261周（2011年11月至2016年10月），并将两个搜索词的RSV与其各自的年度平均值进行比较。采用多项式趋势线（二阶）来估计总体趋势。
我们发现这两个搜索词在5年中均呈上升趋势，趋势线几乎平行。在“粉红十月”期间发现了显著的峰值——乳房X光检查和乳腺癌搜索量分别比年度平均值高出119.1%（2016年）和196.8%（2015年）。在整个研究期间，12月至1月期间RSV的短暂下降也值得注意。这些趋势呈现出N形模式，在“粉红十月”期间有较高的峰值，随后在12月和1月急剧下降。
考虑到这些发现，将“粉红十月”活动安排在每年年初是合理的，从而扩大活动的有益影响。在年初开始筛查活动更为合适，因为此时人们会制定新的计划并将新项目纳入日常安排。我们的工作提请人们关注流量数据的研究，以鼓励健康活动分析师基于营销实践进行更好的分析。
