Temporal association between the introduction of public health programs and interest in oral cancers on the internet in the European Union
Résumé
Background and methods
Health policies at European level about head and neck cancers and
the modification of tobacco packaging since 2016 have been launched to
prevent and dissuade the population from the consequences of their
consumption [1,2].
It would be tedious to survey a population as large as that of the EU
to evaluate the large-scale impact of these measures. On the internet,
online search trends mirror temporal trends with peaks during epi-
demics, and analysis of data will be effective for the study of illnesses
with precision comparable to epidemiological methods [3,4].
The evaluation of the research data of the population on the internet
could make it possible to measure the impact and better guide these
preventive measures [5,6].
Search data collected from users from Google©, Wikipedia© and
Twitter© on oral cancers in the 28 EU countries between 1 January 2004
and 30 September 2018 was collected. Data on articles published in the
press and bibliometric analysis were analysed. The link between these
results and the introduction of public health programmes in the EU
during the same period was investigated.