The research team at UCIPT is hard at work as this momentous year comes to a close. We wish you the happiest of holidays and kind wishes for the new year. Below is an update on some of November’s achievements and the projects underway at UCIPT.
Romina Romero has received provisional approval to publish a paper titled ‘Ethical Perspectives in Sharing Digital Data for Public Health Surveillance Before and Shortly After the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic.’ More information will be shared on this publication shortly.
Romero is also working on manuscripts highlighting technologies used in HIV testing, ethics and informed consent in HIV research, and using peer models in opioid research.
Arjuna Ugarte is working on the UCIPT COVID-19 Misinformation App and won the ‘Best Paper’ award at the EMNLP Covid-19 Workshop for the research publication ‘COVIDLIES: Detecting COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media.’ Below is a tweet from Professor Karin Verspoor congratulating Ugarte and the UCI research team on their win:
Ugarte and Parvati Singh have a number of other papers related to the UCIPT HOPE COVID-19 study also under review. Further information on the publication of those papers will be provided in the near future.
The HOPE HIV study is now in week 11 (out of 12 weeks). The survey about COVID-19 that was sent out to previous waves was analyzed and papers about our findings are currently being drafted with Yan Wang to submit to a journal.
Additionally, the recruitment of peer leaders has commenced for the HOPE Opioid Study. Ugarte and the UCIPT team are on track to begin the study in late February or early March of next year.
With the help of ADSS, UCIPT has developed the CrowdHealth App, which helps predict public health outcomes through crowdsourcing. An example of a user case for the app, is asking participants who have download it app “How many new cases of COVID-19 do you expect to happen over the next week in the United States?” Participants are free to answer as many or as few questions as they would like. We are working on having the app published in the app store. More information and a link for download will be forthcoming shortly.
Other work that is underway by Ugarte includes:
- Using mobility tracking data, we can send ads to recruit participants who have visited bars in our target location. Those who respond to the ads will be taken to a survey about COVID-19 preventative behaviors.
- A HOPE study (peer-led, online, social media group intervention) to help promote mask use, social distancing, and other COVID-19 preventative behaviors with UCI students and/or public schools throughout Orange County.
Ugarte is also working with Lidia Flores on research involving Talk Walker. Ugarte and Flores conducted research using Talk Walker to collect tweets and are working with students to manually label the tweets. They conducted a study to assess whether and how people might have changed their beliefs about COVID-19 as a result of President Trump having contracted the virus. This research also aims to demonstrate the feasibility of using social media as a near-real-time data source to monitor the public’s changing views on topics as a result of political statements on social media.
Lidia Flores continues to explore big data from social media to survey the public’s perception on COVID-19. These topics range from exploring perceptions on vaccines and face masks; and the potential lasting impact widespread events and announcements have on the public’s perception and behaviors. This exploration is helping us learn to refine methods of collecting real-time data on public health issues for quicker interventions.
Our research team is growing and we look forward to sharing more updates with you in the new year. Once again, happiest of holidays to you all from UCIPT and may 2021 be a wonderful new beginning.