Marco Zenone

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | LSHTM · Faculty of Public Health and Policy

Background While the evidence base on web-based cancer misinformation continues to develop, relatively little is known about the extent of such information on the world’s largest e-commerce website, Amazon. Multiple media reports indicate that Amazon may host on its platform questionable cancer-related products for sale, such as books on purported...

Background Complementary and alternative (CAM) cancer treatment is often expensive and not covered by insurance. As a result, many people turn to crowdfunding to access this treatment. Objective The aim of this study is to identify the rationales of patients with cancer seeking CAM treatment abroad by looking specifically at crowdfunding campaigns...

Background Alternative cancer clinics, who provide treatment associated with earlier time to death, actively seek to create favorable views of their services online. An unexplored means where alternative cancer clinics can shape their appeal is their Google search results. Methods We retrieved the Google listing and Google reviews of 47 prominent...

Background Despite widespread use of the short-video social media platform TikTok©, limited research investigates how alcohol is portrayed on the platform. Previous research suggests that a driver of alcohol content on TikTok©, in part, comes from bartenders demonstrating how to make drinks. This study aims to explore the characterizing patterns of...

BACKGROUND While the evidence base on web-based cancer misinformation continues to develop, relatively little is known about the extent of such information on the world’s largest e-commerce website, Amazon. Multiple media reports indicate that Amazon may host on its platform questionable cancer-related products for sale, such as books on purported...

Objective TikTok is one of the most popular social media platforms and plays a role in shaping public perceptions. This research examined how organ donation was portrayed on the platform. Methods We built a dataset of the most popular English-language TikTok videos that used the hashtags #organdonor or #organdonation. We then performed content ana...

BACKGROUND TikTok experienced a surge in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way for people to interact with others, share experiences and thoughts related to the pandemic, and cope with ongoing mental health challenges. However, few studies have explored how youth use TikTok to learn about mental health. OBJECTIVE This study aims to unde...

Background TikTok (ByteDance) experienced a surge in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way for people to interact with others, share experiences and thoughts related to the pandemic, and cope with ongoing mental health challenges. However, few studies have explored how youth use TikTok to learn about mental health. Objective This study...

BACKGROUND Complementary and alternative (CAM) cancer treatment is often expensive and not covered by insurance. As a result, many people turn to crowdfunding to access this treatment. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to identify the rationales of patients with cancer seeking CAM treatment abroad by looking specifically at crowdfunding campaigns...

Date Presented 04/21/2023 TikTok has the potential to be used by OT to share innovations and best practices, build communities of practice, and engage in collaborative efforts to share the value added of the profession across the life span. The purpose of this cross-sectional study is to describe the content of TikTok videos with the hashtag #occup...

Introduction Donation-based crowdfunding was heavily used during the COVID-19 pandemic. While most of these campaigns were uncontroversial, others spread misinformation or undermined public health. In response, mainstream crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe restricted what campaigns they would host. This led some campaigns to shift to lesser-known...

BACKGROUND Health care professionals have utilized the social media platform TikTok as a means of educating individuals worldwide through short-form videos. In the last year, #occupationaltherapy has been accessed millions of times on TikTok, however, presently there is no evidence investigating how occupational therapy information and knowledge is...

Background Medical providers use the short-form video social media platform TikTok to share information related to their scope of practice and insights about their professions. Videos under the hashtag #occupationaltherapy on TikTok have over 100 million views, but there is no evidence investigating how occupational therapy information and knowledg...

This qualitative study summarizes newspaper reporting on views supporting or opposing policies requiring COVID-19 vaccination for organ transplant candidates in the US, the UK, and Canada.

Until recently, the commercial determinants have remained largely absent from conceptual frameworks of the social determinants of health, despite their clear importance to health and well-being. This is especially challenging because even a single large industry sector can have a profound, intersectional impact on sociocultural and physical environ...

Health, harms and disease are intimately linked, and their promotion and distribution are determined by the social, political and physical worlds in which people live. Yet, the popular narrative on health is still dominated by a biological model that focuses on a disease-causing ‘pathogen’ or ‘agent’ that leads to pathology which is diagnosable and...

Background: Alternative cancer treatment is associated with a greater risk of death than cancer patients undergoing conventional treatments. Anecdotal evidence suggests cancer patients view paid advertisements promoting alternative cancer treatment on social media, but the extent and nature of this advertising remain unknown. This context suggests...

BACKGROUND Alternative cancer treatment is associated with a greater risk of death than cancer patients undergoing conventional treatments. Anecdotal evidence suggests cancer patients view paid advertisements promoting alternative cancer treatment on social media, but the extent and nature of this advertising remain unknown. This context suggests a...

This qualitative study investigates emergent conspiracy theories about monkeypox collected from content and metadata posted by users of a social media video app.

Background In Canada, the prevalence of mental health challenges is highest in young people aged 12–24. Mental health challenges frequently cause marked functional impairment. Despite this, we are unaware of any existing conceptualization and/or measures of function that has been developed from the perspective of young people. The objective of this...

Objective During the COVID-19 pandemic, Foundry responded to support youth across the province of British Columbia (BC), Canada, by creating a virtual platform to deliver integrated services to youth. In this paper, we report on the development of Foundry Virtual services, initial evaluation results and lessons learnt for others implementing virtua...

Natural herd immunity, where community-acquired infections in low-risk populations are used to protect high risk populations from infection–has seen high profile support in some quarters, including through the Great Barrington Declaration. However, this approach has been widely criticized as ineffective and misinformed. In this study, we examine me...

Mounting evidence suggests that problematic adolescent social media use is associated with poor mental health. To respond to increased adolescent mental health concerns, health promoters increasingly rely on social media initiatives to promote their resources, programs, and services. This creates a paradoxical situation where social-media-linked ad...

Background Cannabidiol (CBD) is commonly used to manage symptoms in conditions and diseases for which there is limited clinical research for its application. How consumers arrive and decide to use CBD for medical treatment, despite lacking clinical evidence, is largely unknown. In this paper, we seek to identify the informational pathways through w...

In recent years, the concept of commercial determinants of health (CDoH) has attracted scholarly, public policy, and activist interest. To date, however, this new attention has failed to yield a clear and consistent definition, well-defined metrics for quantifying its impact, or coherent directions for research and intervention. By tracing the orig...

The commercial determinants of health (CDoH) describe the adverse health effects associated with for-profit actors and their actions. Despite efforts to advance the definition, conceptualization, and empirical analyses of CDoH, the term's practical application to mitigate these effects requires the capacity to measure the influences of specific com...

Foundry is an integrated service network delivering services to young people across British Columbia, Canada. To better understand the needs of transgender and gender nonconforming young people accessing Foundry—this study compares rates of mental health distress between transgender and gender nonconforming young people and cisgender young people a...

Suzuki et al have identified commonalities in the policy positions adopted at a global forum by commercial sector actors and high-income countries (HICs), on the one hand, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), on the other, in ways that may allow commercial sector actors to block or delay evidence-ba...

In 2018, the sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) industry introduced a ballot measure (I-1634) in Washington State of the United States to prevent further local taxes on groceries. The measure, which passed, is emblematic of new pre-emptive legislative strategies by the SSB industry to block soda taxes and conceal those strategies under the guise of pre...

Background Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are the leading global source of added sugar intake and their consumption is associated with negative health outcomes, such as diabetes, cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and overall mortality. Despite consensus within the public health community about the need to reduce sugar intake, the non-alcoholic be...

Background In Canada, the legalization of cannabis has enabled cannabidiol (CBD) to become a popular commercial product, increasingly used for medical or therapeutic purposes. There are currently over one thousand CBD products available globally, ranging from oil extracts to CBD-infused beverages. Despite increased usage and availability, the evide...

With the current COVID-19 pandemic impacting communities across the globe, diverse health promotion strategies are required to address the wide-ranging challenges we face. Art is a highly engaging tool that promotes positive well-being and increases community engagement and participation. The ‘Create Hope Mural’ campaign emerged as an arts-based he...

Objectives. To understand whether and how crowdfunding campaigns are a source of COVID-19–related misinformation. Methods. We searched the GoFundMe crowdfunding platform using 172 terms associated with medical misinformation about COVID-19 prophylaxes and treatments. We screened resulting campaigns for those making statements about the ability of t...

Foundry is a province-wide network of integrated health and social service centres for young people aged 12–24 in British Columbia (BC), Canada. Online resources and virtual care broaden Foundry’s reach. Its online platform – foundrybc.ca – offers information and resources on topics such as mental health, sexual wellness, life skills, and other con...

Background Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is increasingly being integrated into conventional medical care for cancer, used to counter the side effects of conventional cancer treatment, and offered as an alternative to conventional cancer care. Our aim is to gain a broader understanding of trends in CAM interventions for cancer and cro...

Objectives. To use crowdfunding campaigns to better understand how cannabidiol (CBD) is represented (and misrepresented) as cancer-related care. Methods. We analyzed CBD-related crowdfunding campaigns (n = 155) created between January 2017 and May 2019 in multiple countries on GoFundme.com. Results. More than 81.9% of campaigns fundraised CBD...

Background Medical crowdfunding is the process of using a crowdfunding platform to raise funds for medical treatment and associated expenses, such as missing work or transportation costs to access care. This type of crowdfunding has become increasingly popular, and is an effective tool to raise financing for medical treatment in the absence of ins...

Foundry empowers youth and young adults aged 12 to 24 years to lead healthy lives through a province-wide network of centers and online resources in British Columbia, Canada. However, initial evaluation data gathered from Foundry centers have shown that boys and young men are half as likely to access Foundry compared to girls and young women. To ad...

Background: There are a range of perceived gaps and shortcomings in the publicly funded Canadian health system. These include wait times for care, lack of public insurance coverage for dental care and pharmaceuticals, and difficulties accessing specialist care. Medical crowdfunding is a response to these gaps where individuals raise funds from the...

Medical crowdfunding is an increasingly popular means of leveraging social networks to raise money for health‐related expenses. While providing crucial access to care for many, it is also accompanied by increased risks of fraudulent activity. While many such cases of fraud have been publicized by the news media, and research articles mention the po...