TY - JOUR
T1 - Global Online Interest in HIV/AIDS care Services in the time of COVID-19
T2 - A Google Trends Analysis
AU - Ornos, Eric David B.
AU - Tantengco, Ourlad Alzeus G.
AU - Abad, Cybele Lara R.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
PY - 2023/6
Y1 - 2023/6
N2 - The Covid-19 pandemic has compounded the challenge of HIV/AIDS elimination, creating difficulties in accessing HIV care services such as early testing and treatment. This paper characterized the global online interest in HIV care services-related search terms before and during the pandemic. Global online search interest for HIV was measured using the Google Trends™ database. Spearman’s rank-order correlation correlated country-specific characteristics and HIV prevalence data with the search volume index (SVI). We found a significant decrease in the global online search interest for HIV/AIDS care services-related search terms during the Covid-19 pandemic. The top countries with the highest online interest for “HIV/AIDS” search terms were Zambia, Eswatini, Malawi, Lesotho, and Zimbabwe. In addition, search volume indices for HIV correlated positively with HIV prevalence and negatively with GDP, GDP per capita, and the number of physicians. This result highlights that resource-poor countries with a high prevalence of HIV have a high online interest in HIV/AIDS. Therefore, there is a need to improve internet access, the quality of HIV-related health information, and online health literacy to improve health-seeking behavior, especially in areas with a high disease burden. Overall, our study shows that the infodemiologic approach through Google Trends™ can be used to assess the online interest of the public toward HIV infection and related healthcare services.
AB - The Covid-19 pandemic has compounded the challenge of HIV/AIDS elimination, creating difficulties in accessing HIV care services such as early testing and treatment. This paper characterized the global online interest in HIV care services-related search terms before and during the pandemic. Global online search interest for HIV was measured using the Google Trends™ database. Spearman’s rank-order correlation correlated country-specific characteristics and HIV prevalence data with the search volume index (SVI). We found a significant decrease in the global online search interest for HIV/AIDS care services-related search terms during the Covid-19 pandemic. The top countries with the highest online interest for “HIV/AIDS” search terms were Zambia, Eswatini, Malawi, Lesotho, and Zimbabwe. In addition, search volume indices for HIV correlated positively with HIV prevalence and negatively with GDP, GDP per capita, and the number of physicians. This result highlights that resource-poor countries with a high prevalence of HIV have a high online interest in HIV/AIDS. Therefore, there is a need to improve internet access, the quality of HIV-related health information, and online health literacy to improve health-seeking behavior, especially in areas with a high disease burden. Overall, our study shows that the infodemiologic approach through Google Trends™ can be used to assess the online interest of the public toward HIV infection and related healthcare services.
KW - Covid-19
KW - Google trend
KW - HIV
KW - Infodemiology
KW - Internet
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85142902800
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85142902800#tab=citedBy
U2 - 10.1007/s10461-022-03933-w
DO - 10.1007/s10461-022-03933-w
M3 - Article
C2 - 36441409
AN - SCOPUS:85142902800
SN - 1090-7165
VL - 27
SP - 1998
EP - 2004
JO - AIDS and Behavior
JF - AIDS and Behavior
IS - 6
ER -