SHB: Small: Facilitating Mentoring in Peer Health Communities through Social Matching

SHB：小型：通过社交匹配促进同伴健康社区的指导

• 批准号: 1117187
• 负责人: Wanda Pratt
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: University of Washington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-09-01 至 2016-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1117187&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SHB; Small; Facilitating; Mentoring; Peer

Through the experience of serious illness, patients develop substantial expertise about managing their personal health. When experienced patients ("mentors") share their expertise with individuals who are facing a health situation for the first time, they find considerable value is this help. Peer health communities offer a broad base of such "patient expertise", yet people can miss out on this valuable resource because, all too often, peer mentoring is difficult to obtain and yields advice that doesn't quite fit one's personal situation or context.The efforts within this project are focused on overcoming this challenge by applying social matching as a technical and intellectual framework for connecting peers for mentorship in online health communities. In partnership with an online cancer community, the investigators are conducting a series of three studies that: (1) Identifying critical mentorship characteristics through a comparative study of automated text extraction as contrasted with to direct user entry of data, (2) Developing tools that connect peers for mentorship through rapid prototyping and usability testing with cancer patients, and (3) Assessing the value of matching for peer mentoring through an online community-based field evaluation.The results from this research are expected to significantly improve the way people obtain peer help when faced with a health problem. Through a deeper understanding of patients' support needs, this project will use rich online community data to provide tailored recommendations of suitable peer mentors. This work advances knowledge of collaboration in online communities broadly and will translate to other patient services, such as face-to-face support groups. These contributions are significant because they offer patients crucial support strategies in an increasingly burdened healthcare system. Matchmaking among individuals with shared circumstances helps newcomers glean tailored insights into "what to expect" and helps those with experience to share their valuable expertise by "giving back". Thus, this work boosts our current understanding of the underlying processes and informs future research and development in technology that enhances the health and wellbeing of citizens by empowering peer mentorship.

通过严重疾病的经历，患者发展了管理个人健康的大量专业知识。当有经验的患者（“导师”）与第一次面临健康问题的个人分享他们的专业知识时，他们发现这种帮助具有相当大的价值。同伴健康社区提供了广泛的“患者专业知识”基础，但人们可能会错过这一宝贵的资源，因为，太多时候，同伴指导很难获得，而且产生的建议不太适合个人的情况或背景。本项目的努力集中在克服这一挑战，通过应用社会匹配作为一个技术和智力框架，在线健康社区。研究人员与一个在线癌症社区合作，正在进行一系列三项研究：（1）通过自动文本提取与直接用户输入数据的比较研究来识别关键的指导特征，（2）通过快速原型设计和癌症患者的可用性测试来开发连接同行进行指导的工具，（3）通过在线社区实地评估，评估同伴指导匹配的价值。本研究的结果有望显着改善人们在面临健康问题时获得同伴帮助的方式。透过更深入了解病人的支援需要，该计划将利用丰富的网上社区数据，提供合适的朋辈导师的量身订造建议。这项工作广泛地推进了在线社区的协作知识，并将转化为其他患者服务，如面对面的支持小组。这些贡献是重要的，因为他们为患者提供了至关重要的支持战略，在日益负担沉重的医疗保健系统。在有共同环境的个人之间牵线搭桥，有助于新来者收集关于“期望什么”的有针对性的见解，并帮助那些有经验的人通过“回馈”分享他们宝贵的专业知识。因此，这项工作提高了我们目前对基本过程的理解，并为未来的技术研究和开发提供信息，通过增强同伴指导来增强公民的健康和福祉。