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Assessing public health interventions using Web content
Public health interventions are a fundamental tool for mitigating the spread
of an infectious disease. However, it is not always possible to obtain a
conclusive estimate for the impact of an intervention, especially in situations
where the effects are fragmented in population parts that are under-represented
within traditional public health surveillance schemes. To this end, online user
activity can be used as a complementary sensor to establish alternative
measures. Here, we provide a summary of our research on formulating statistical
frameworks for assessing public health interventions based on data from social
media and search engines (Lampos et al., 2015 [20]; Wagner et al., 2017 [37]).
Our methodology has been applied in two real-world case studies: the 2013/14
and 2014/15 flu vaccination campaigns in England, where school-age children
were vaccinated in a number of locations aiming to reduce the overall
transmission of the virus. Disease models from online data combined with
historical patterns of disease prevalence across different areas allowed us to
quantify the impact of the intervention. In addition, a qualitative evaluation
of our impact estimates demonstrated that they were in line with independent
assessments from public health authorities