A Data-Driven Social Network Intervention for Improving Organ Donation Awareness Among Minorities: Analysis and Optimization of a Cross-Sectional Study

Background Increasing the number of organ donors may enhance organ transplantation, and past health interventions have shown the potential to generate both large-scale and sustainable changes, particularly among minorities. Objective This study aimed to propose a conceptual data-driven framework that tracks digital markers of public organ donation awareness using Twitter and delivers an optimized social network intervention (SNI) to targeted audiences using Facebook. Methods We monitored digital markers of organ donation awareness across the United States over a 1-year period using Twitter and examined their association with organ donation registration. We delivered this SNI on Facebook with and without optimized awareness content (ie, educational content with a weblink to an online donor registration website) to low-income Hispanics in Los Angeles over a 1-month period and measured the daily number of impressions (ie, exposure to information) and clicks (ie, engagement) among the target audience. Results Digital markers of organ donation awareness on Twitter are associated with donation registration (beta=.0032; P <.001) such that 10 additional organ-related tweets are associated with a 3.20% (33,933/1,060,403) increase in the number of organ donor registrations at the city level. In addition, our SNI on Facebook effectively reached 1 million users, and the use of optimization significantly increased the rate of clicks per impression (beta=.0213; P <.004). Conclusions Our framework can provide a real-time characterization of organ donation awareness while effectively delivering tailored interventions to minority communities. It can complement past approaches to create large-scale, sustainable interventions that are capable of raising awareness and effectively mitigate disparities in organ donation.