Engagement with Programmatic Electronic Communications Among Young Adults with Breast Cancer

We sought to better understand the engagement and interest in topics conveyed via electronic (e-)communications to young adults with breast cancer to inform clinical programming, resource creation, and communication strategy for this patient population.

The Young and Strong (Y&S) program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) utilizes Emma^©, a HIPAA-compliant communications platform, to create and share e-communications with all patients aged 44 or younger at breast cancer diagnosis, seen at least once at DFCI, including satellite sites. Program faculty and staff curate and contribute relevant clinical and research news, resources, and events, including research opportunities, support groups, webinars, and in-person events. We exploratorily analyzed recipient data using Emma to describe patient engagement with monthly and standalone e-communications from September 2020 to April 2023, including open rates (number opened/number successful deliveries) and click-to-open rates (number clicks/number opened).

An average of 3915 young patients were emailed monthly e-communications (range 3202-4380). The open rate steadily increased from 19.3 to 53.0% over 31 months. The topics with the highest click rate were content related to virtual or in-person peer- and social work-led support meetings (15%), healthy lifestyle and integrative therapy (15%), DFCI-organized conferences/series (13%), and managing the details of life (10%). One topic of interest was that of fertility and childrearing, comprising almost 50% of all clicks between March 2021 and June 2021, and almost 20% between December 2022 and March 2023.

Young patients with breast cancer engage heavily with programmatic e-communications focused on information about opportunities to interact with peers or experts, whether support meetings or informational events. This group appears eager for additional information on the unique lifestyle and reproductive challenges that they may face.