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Assessing and addressing COVID-19 information needs via a weather application
Mollie M McKillop1, Courtney VanHouten1, Carol Bales2
1Center for AI Research and Evaluation, IBM Watson Health, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
JAMIA Open
|May 3, 2022
Summary
A COVID-19 information hub on The Weather Company app reached millions, yet over a third of users didn't change preventive behaviors despite high knowledge of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Area of Science:
- Public Health
- Digital Health Communication
- Epidemiology
Background:
- The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated rapid dissemination of public health information.
- Integrating health information into widely used applications like The Weather Company (TWC) offers a novel approach to reach large populations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To describe the implementation and usage of a COVID-19 digital information hub within the TWC application.
- To explore user knowledge, behaviors, and information needs related to COVID-19.
Main Methods:
- Deployment of a COVID-19 information hub displaying local case counts and trends via the TWC app.
- Measurement of unique users, visits, and interaction times.
- A cross-sectional survey in August 2020 to assess respondent characteristics, COVID-19 knowledge, behaviors, and preferences.
Main Results:
- The TWC COVID-19 hub attracted an average of 1.97 million unique users and over 2.6 million daily visits.
- 92.3% of respondents reported being knowledgeable about COVID-19, and 90.9% knew relevant safety precautions.
- 35.3% of respondents did not increase preventive practices despite COVID-19 information.
Conclusions:
- A widely adopted weather application successfully delivered COVID-19 data to millions of Americans.
- Despite high self-reported knowledge and awareness of preventive measures, a significant portion of the population did not translate this into increased preventive behaviors.
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