Browsing by Subject "recommendation"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Aspirin May Help Prevent Heart Attack and Stroke
    (2010-07-21) Merkle, Alexander
    Aspirin can help prevent heart disease and stroke for some people. The aspirin used for prevention is affordable and found over-the-counter. Aspirin may not be the right choice for some people, especially those who are at risk for bleeding. Talk to your doctor before beginning to take aspirin to prevent heart disease and stroke.
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    Understanding and facilitating peer communication in online health communities
    (2022-07) Levonian, Zachary
    When a person has a health crisis, the availability of social support affects both their physical and mental health. Online communities can make support available by providing a place to connect with peers who have had similar experiences. However, finding relevant peers to talk to and learn from is challenging. Algorithmic systems for peer matching could help people find relevant peers, but designing such systems requires an understanding of how people use online communities for support—when, how, and to whom they connect. I collaborated with a large existing online community—CaringBridge.org—to understand how patients experiencing a health crisis and their non-professional caregivers use CaringBridge to seek and receive support. Based on this understanding, I created a recommendation system to facilitate peer connections on CaringBridge. CaringBridge users of my system received email recommendations for peer users they may wish to connect with. By collecting survey and usage feedback, I advance an understanding of when support seekers and providers connect with potentially-supportive peers. Taken together, my work describes quantitatively and qualitatively the use of health-related online communities for receiving and providing social support. My work has implications for the deployment of peer-matching systems that facilitate supportive communication.