P3.132: Social Media Posts by Children’s Hospitals and Injury Prevention Content - A Missed Opportunity for Education & Advocacy

Background: Preventable injuries are the leading cause of pediatric death. Most healthcare organizations and the general public engage in social media (SoMe) to disseminate and consume health-related information. However, it is unclear how frequently pediatric hospitals leverage their SoMe platforms to educate the general public on injury prevention (IP) topics. Thus, we sought to better characterize SoMe messaging and IP content by children’s hospitals.

Methods: This was a retrospective cross-sectional study of US children’s hospitals’ primary SoMe Facebook (FB), Twitter/X (X), and Instagram (IG) accounts. Included hospitals were associated with the Injury Free Coalition for Kids (IFCK), a current or past Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Injury Control and Research Center (CDC ICRC), a level 1 pediatric trauma center, or a pediatric surgery fellowship. Accounts established after 1/1/23 or covering adult health topics were excluded. Trained data abstractors reviewed all posts from 2023; posts were dichotomized into IP vs non-IP content, with further subcategorization based on injury mechanisms and other topics covered. Data abstraction is ongoing. Descriptive statistics and frequencies with ranges were calculated. Chi-squared analyses were used for comparisons between groups.

Results: Of the 82 unique hospitals with eligible SoMe accounts, all used FB and 69 (84.1%) used all 3 SoMe platforms (table 1). FB accounts had the most followers (median=53,500; 25th%ile 25,750; 75th%ile 124,250). Of 25,685 posts from 43 hospitals, 1,600 (6.2%) posts covered IP (table 2). Individual hospital SoMe accounts discussed IP in 0% to 12.4% of posts. Amongst IP posts, the most frequently covered specific topics were mental health/suicide (N=210; 0.8%), poisonings (N=161; 0.6%), and water safety (N=124; 0.5%). Most non-IP posts were focused on general publicity/goodwill (N=24,085; 46.5%); the most frequently covered medical categories were cardiac (N=1,110; 4.3%), cancer (N=984; 3.8%), and neonatal (N=804; 3.1%). Hospital affiliation with IFCK (𝞦2 =10.72; p<.001), pediatric surgery fellowship (𝞦2 =16.81; p<.001), and level 1 pediatric trauma center (𝞦2 =6.65; p=.01) was associated with more IP content. More affiliations with IP oriented organizations were also associated with more IP content (𝞦2 =35.05; p<.001).

Conclusion: Although children’s hospitals have large SoMe followings, IP is rarely discussed in SoMe content. While ties to IP oriented organizations improves coverage of IP content, this represents a critical missed opportunity to address the leading causes of pediatric deaths.