Exploring the Impact of Public Health Campaigns for Glaucoma and Macular Degeneration Utilising Google Trends Data in a New Zealand Setting

Aim: To evaluate the impact of public health campaigns for glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration compared to breast cancer and prostate cancer using Google Trends data.

Methods: Relative search volumes for the terms 'glaucoma', 'macular degeneration', 'breast cancer' and 'prostate cancer' for New Zealand from October 2008-September 2018 were obtained via Google Trends. Intervention time-series analyses were used to compare observations before and after each awareness campaign.

Results: Of the campaigns occurring in the 10-year study period, statistically significant increases in search behaviour were observed for breast cancer (45%, p<0.01), prostate cancer (32%, p<0.01) and glaucoma (16%, p<0.01). Macular degeneration search behaviour increased on average 14% but this was not statistically significant (p>0.1), although increased activity (294%) was observed in December 2016, corresponding with the release of a report, public meeting and media release on the socioeconomic impact of macular degeneration.

Conclusions: Glaucoma and macular degeneration search behaviour in New Zealand has a low impact following health awareness campaigns in comparison to breast and prostate cancer. This implies there is scope for improvement with these campaigns and a large increase in macular degeneration activity following a public meeting, and report release suggests that increased funding may increase impact. This study also highlights the utility of internet data for cost-effective monitoring of public interest in health issues.