Impact of social media-based health campaigns on knowledge, belief, and self-reported behavior during COVID-19

Digital media has emerged as a vital tool for timely, global dissemination of public health information. From 2020 to 2022, the World Health Organization ran 81 social media health campaigns on COVID-19, the impact of which were assessed using Brand Lift Studies from Meta, Inc. We conducted two meta-analyses, age-stratified and gender-stratified respectively, to assess impact across recall, knowledge, belief, and behavior questions.

Overall, we observed improved lift (i.e. higher proportions of individuals giving desired answers in intervention vs. control group) in both models. In the age-stratified model, there was positive and significant lift among recall (3.0%, 95% CI: 2.2–3.8%), knowledge (0.9%, 95% CI: 0.3–1.5) and belief (0.4%, 95% CI: 0.1–0.8) questions; behavior questions showed positive, but insignificant, lift (0.1%, 95% CI: -0.8–1.1). In the gender-stratified model, only recall (2.9%, 95% CI: 2.1–3.6) showed significant lift, but positive lift was seen in knowledge (0.7%, 95% CI: -0.2–1.5), belief (0.1%, 95% CI: -0.1–0.5), and behavior (0.2%, 95% CI: -0.1–0.4) questions.

Our results suggest that social media-based health promotion campaigns may be efficient and effective tools for sharing urgent health information with global audiences, with the potential to drive social and behavior change globally during future pandemics. Authors would like to thank the WHO HQ, WHO AFRO, WHO EMRO, WHO EURO, WHO SEARO, WHO WPRO and PAHO WHO offices, the social media experts who led ‘Brand Lift Study’ campaigns development and operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as all communications experts, risk communications and technical experts who contributed and supported this effort. Yale School of Public Health, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA World Health Organization Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland Aleksandra Kuzmanovic, Giselle Miguens & Mohamed Gulaid Peter O′Donnell Jr.

School of Public Health, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 5323 Harry Hines Blvd, Dallas, TX, 75390, USA Amyn A. Malik, Hannah Melchinger & Saad B. Omer Yale School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA AK is an employee of the World Health Organization (WHO), and MG and GM were employees of WHO at the time of the study.

SBO serves on several WHO boards in an advisory capacity and received funding from Meta Platforms, Inc. to support the production of the Digital Media for Health Outcomes course. Informed consent for the BLS surveys conducted by the WHO prior to this evaluation was obtained through Meta’s overall privacy and consent policy that users agree to when they start using the platforms. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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