Yulin Hswen

Harvard University | Harvard · Department of Society, Human Development, and Health

This study examines the acceptance of artificial intelligence (AI)-based diagnostic alternatives compared to traditional biological testing through a randomized scenario experiment in the domain of neurodegenerative diseases (NDs). A total of 3225 pairwise choices of ND risk-prediction tools were offered to participants, with 1482 choices comparing...

Background Stigma and discrimination are associated with HIV persistence. Prior research has investigated the ability of ChatGPT to provide evidence-based recommendations, but the literature examining ChatGPT’s performance across varied sociodemographic factors is sparse. The aim of this study is to understand how ChatGPT 3.5 and 4.0 provide HIV-re...

Background Anti-Asian hate crimes escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic; however, limited research has explored the association between social media sentiment and hate crimes toward Asian communities. Objective This study aims to investigate the relationship between Twitter (rebranded as X) sentiment data and the occurrence of anti-Asian hate cri...

Urban greenspace is associated with a wide variety of human health benefits, from improved mental health to reduced violent crime and infant birth outcomes. This study investigates long-term trends in the distribution of greenspace across census tracts in the 260 U.S. cities with populations greater than 100,000 residents based on economic privileg...

This study quantifies the change in travel times for military service personnel to abortion facilities following the US Supreme Court Dobbs decision and estimates the cost of an abortion-related travel reimbursement policy.

The US federal menu labeling law, implemented on May 7 th 2018, required that restaurant chains post calorie counts on menu items. The purpose of this study was to analyze the change in public sentiment, using Twitter data, regarding eight restaurant chains before and after the calorie labeling law’s implementation. Twitter data was mined from Twit...

BACKGROUND Anti-Asian hate crimes escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic; however, limited research has explored the association between social media sentiment and hate crimes toward Asian communities. OBJECTIVE This study aims to investigate the relationship between Twitter (rebranded as X) sentiment data and the occurrence of anti-Asian hate cri...

Background Research has demonstrated the negative impact of racism on health, yet the measurement of racial sentiment remains challenging. This paper provides practical guidance in using social media data for measuring public sentiment. Methods We describe the main steps of such research including data collection, data cleaning, binary sentiment a...

Background: Large racial and ethnic disparities in adverse birth outcomes persist. Increasing evidence points to the potential role of racism in creating and perpetuating these disparities. Valid measures of area-level racial attitudes and bias remain elusive, but capture an important and underexplored form of racism that may help explain these di...

Background: Research is needed to fully investigate the differential mechanisms racial and ethnic groups use to deal with ongoing intersectional racism in women's lives. The aim of this paper was to understand how Asian American and Pacific Islander, Black, Latina, and Middle Eastern women experience racism-from personal perceptions and interactio...

We investigated the content of liberal and conservative news media Facebook posts on race and ethnic health disparities. A total of 3,327,360 liberal and conservative news Facebook posts from the United States (US) from January 2015 to May 2022 were collected from the Crowd Tangle platform and filtered for race and health-related keywords. Qualitat...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1057/s41599-022-01338-7.].

BACKGROUND Large racial and ethnic disparities in adverse birth outcomes persist. Increasing evidence points to the potential role of racism in creating and perpetuating these disparities. Valid measures of area-level racial attitudes and bias remain elusive, but capture an important and underexplored form of racism that may help explain these disp...

Background: Despite persistent racial disparities in maternal health in the USA, there is limited qualitative research on women's experiences of discrimination during pregnancy and childbirth that focuses on similarities and differences across multiple racial groups. Methods: Eleven focus groups with Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), B...

Importance: Abortion facility closures resulted in a substantial decrease in access to abortion care in the US. Objectives: To investigate the changes in travel time to the nearest abortion facility after the Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization (referred to hereafter as Dobbs) US Supreme Court decision. Design, setting, and participants...

This study aims to evaluate people’s willingness to provide their geospatial global positioning system (GPS) data from their smartphones during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the self-determination theory, the addition of monetary incentives to encourage data provision may have an adverse effect on spontaneous donation. Therefore, we tested if a c...

Introduction: Geospatial temporal data derived from smartphones traditionally used for purposes of navigation may offer valuable information for public health surveillance and locational hot spotting. Our objective was to develop a web-based application, called Covidseeker, that captures continuous fine-grained geospatial temporal data from smartp...

In the United States, cocaine use and mortality have surged in the past 5 years. Considering cocaine’s reputation as a fashionable social drug, the rise of cocaine mentions in popular music may provide a signal of epidemiological trends of cocaine use. We characterized the relationship between mentions of cocaine in song lyrics and incidence of coc...

Importance Tensions around COVID-19 and systemic racism have raised the question: are hospitals advocating for equity for their Black patients? It is imperative for hospitals to be supportive of the Black community and acknowledge themselves as safe spaces, run by clinicians and staff who care about social justice issues that impact the health of t...

Public awareness of calories in food sold in retail establishments is a primary objective of the menu labeling law. This study explores the extent to which we can use social media and internet search queries to understand whether the federal calorie labeling law increased awareness of calories. To evaluate the association of the federal menu labeli...

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention alerted of a suspected outbreak of lung illness associated with using E-cigarette products in September 2019. At the time that the CDC published its alert little was known about the causes of the outbreak or who was at risk for it. Here we provide insights into the outbreak through analysis of passi...

As policies are adjusted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic according to public health best practices, there is a need to balance the importance of social distancing in preventing viral spread with the strain that these governmental public safety mandates put on public mental health. Thus, there is need for continuous observation of public sentiment...

Effective and timely disease surveillance systems have the potential to help public health officials design interventions to mitigate the effects of disease outbreaks. Currently, healthcare-based disease monitoring systems in France offer influenza activity information that lags real-time by one to three weeks. This temporal data gap introduces unc...

While efficacious vaccines have been developed to inoculate against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2; also known as COVID-19), public vaccine hesitancy could still undermine efforts to combat the pandemic. Employing a survey of 1096 adult Americans recruited via the Lucid platform, we examined the relationships between va...

Objectives. To examine the extent to which the phrases, “COVID-19” and “Chinese virus” were associated with anti-Asian sentiments. Methods. Data were collected from Twitter’s Application Programming Interface, which included the hashtags “#covid19” or “#chinesevirus.” We analyzed tweets from March 9 to 23, 2020, corresponding to the week before and...

Background In late March 2020, state and local governments across the country issued stay-at-home directives to slow the spread of COVID-19. However, divergent messages from political parties on the severity of COVID-19 and differing levels of support of these social distancing measures have potentially prompted differential behaviors across politi...

Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease in the Northern Hemisphere. Existing estimates of Lyme disease spread are delayed a year or more. We introduce Lymelight—a new method for monitoring the incidence of Lyme disease in real-time. We use a machine-learned classifier of web search sessions to estimate the number of individuals who searc...

Objectives Rapid detection and surveillance of COVID-19 is essential to reducing spread of the virus. Inadequate screening capacity has hampered COVID-19 detection, while traditional infectious disease response has been delayed due to significant demands for healthcare resources, time and personnel. This study investigated whether an online health...

The Gulf of Mexico (GoM) region is prone to disasters, including recurrent oil spills, hurricanes, floods, industrial accidents, harmful algal blooms, and the current COVID-19 pandemic. The GoM and other regions of the U.S. lack sufficient baseline health information to identify, attribute, mitigate, and facilitate prevention of major health effect...

Importance: The development of a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine has progressed at unprecedented speed. Widespread public uptake of the vaccine is crucial to stem the pandemic. Objective: To examine the factors associated with survey participants' self-reported likelihood of selecting and receiving a hypothetical COVID-19 vaccine. D...

Purpose: The purpose was to use Twitter to conduct online surveillance of negative sentiment towards Mexicans and Hispanics during the 2016 United States presidential election, and to examine its relationship with mental well-being in this targeted group at the population level. Methods: Tweets containing the terms Mexican(s) and Hispanic(s) wer...

It describes a framework for a health observing system encompassing existing cross-sectional population surveys and new, proposed longitudinal cohort studies to identify health impacts of future disasters along the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast. The plan should be adaptable for many environmental disaster-prone regions and for use track other health pr...

The geographic variation of human movement is largely unknown, mainly due to a lack of accurate and scalable data. Here we describe global human mobility patterns, aggregated from over 300 million smartphone users. The data cover nearly all countries and 65% of Earth’s populated surface, including cross-border movements and international migration....

Globally, water scarcity has become a common challenge across many regions. Digital surveillance holds promise for monitoring environmental threats to population health due to severe drought. The 2019 Chennai water crisis in India resulted in severe disruptions to social order and daily life, with local residents suffering due to water shortages. T...

Purpose The purpose was to use Twitter to conduct online surveillance of negative sentiment towards Mexicans and Hispanics during the 2016 United States presidential election, and to examine its relationship with mental well-being in this targeted group at the population level. Methods Tweets containing the terms Mexican(s) and Hispanic(s) were co...

We paired high-resolution travel-time metrics with a SARS-CoV-2 testing location database in the United States. Median travel time to testing sites is longer in counties with lower population density, and a higher percent of minority and uninsured individuals. Differential geographic accessibility to testing can recapitulate healthcare disparities...

Importance Access to testing is key to a successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Objective To determine the geographic accessibility to SARS-CoV-2 testing sites in the United States, as quantified by travel time. Design Cross-sectional analysis of SARS-CoV-2 testing sites as of April 7, 2020 in relation to travel time. Setting United State...

Increasing capacity to provide buprenorphine, a treatment for opioid addiction, can help mitigate the opioid epidemic in the United States. This study models black-market pricing of buprenorphine to better understand supply and demand for opioid addiction treatment. A mixed effects linear model was used to quantify the effect of county-level racial...

Cases of a novel coronavirus were first reported in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, in December 2019 and have since spread across the world. Epidemiological studies have indicated human-to-human transmission in China and elsewhere. To aid the analysis and tracking of the COVID-19 epidemic we collected and curated individual-level data from national,...

BACKGROUND Asthma affects over 330 million people worldwide. Timing of the asthma event is extremely important and lack of identification of asthma increases the risk of death. A major challenge for health systems is the length of time between symptom onset and care seeking, which could result in delayed treatment initiation and worsening of sympto...

Background Asthma affects over 330 million people worldwide. Timing of an asthma event is extremely important and lack of identification of asthma increases the risk of death. A major challenge for health systems is the length of time between symptom onset and care seeking, which could result in delayed treatment initiation and worsening of symptom...

Limited research has evaluated these equitable policies because of the difficulty of capturing LGBTQ patient experience. Previous studies have shown that LGBTQ persons report increased rates of discrimination across a wide variety of healthcare settings which may prevent them from disclosing their LGBTQ status. The goal of this research was to use...

BACKGROUND Drug overdose death from opioids continue to increase in the United States with two out of three drug overdose deaths involving an opioid. News media coverage is a powerful on public attitudes and government action. The digitization of news media has changed the landscape of coverage and may have implications towards the response to the...

Background: News media coverage is a powerful influence on public attitude and government action. The digitization of news media covering the current opioid epidemic has changed the landscape of coverage and may have implications for how to effectively respond to the opioid crisis. Objective: This study aims to characterize the relationship betw...

Effective and timely disease surveillance systems have the potential to help public health officials design interventions to mitigate the effects of disease outbreaks. Currently, healthcare-based disease monitoring systems in France offer influenza activity information that lags real-time by 1 to 3 weeks. This temporal data gap introduces uncertain...

BACKGROUND Discrimination in the healthcare system contributes to worse health outcomes among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) patients. OBJECTIVE We examined disparities in patient experience among LGBTQ persons using social media data. METHODS We collected patient experience data from Twitter from February-2013 to February-...

Background Discrimination in the health care system contributes to worse health outcomes among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) patients. Objective The aim of this study is to examine disparities in patient experience among LGBTQ persons using social media data. Methods We collected patient experience data from Twitter from...

BACKGROUND Patient experience (PE) is directly related to health outcomes and minority groups historically have had worse PE. Evaluation of patient experience (PE) among minority groups has been difficult due to lack of representation in traditional health care surveys. OBJECTIVE This study assesses the feasibility of Twitter to identify racial di...

Background Racial and ethnic minority groups often face worse patient experiences compared with the general population, which is directly related to poorer health outcomes within these minority populations. Evaluation of patient experience among racial and ethnic minority groups has been difficult due to lack of representation in traditional health...

Air pollution is a serious public health concern. Innovative and scalable methods for detecting harmful air pollutants such as PM2.5 are necessary. This study assessed the feasibility of using social media to monitor outdoor air pollution in an urban area by comparing data from Twitter and validating it against established air monitoring stations....

Background People with schizophrenia experience elevated risk of suicide. Mental health symptoms, including depression and anxiety, contribute to increased risk of suicide. Digital technology could support efforts to detect suicide risk and inform suicide prevention efforts. Objective This exploratory study examined the feasibility of monitoring o...

Background: There are documented differences in access to health care across the United States. Previous research indicates that Web-based data regarding patient experiences and opinions of health care are available from Twitter. Sentiment analyses of Twitter data can be used to examine differences in patient views of health care across the United...

BACKGROUND More than 3.5 million Americans live with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Major challenges persist in diagnosing ASD as no medical test to diagnose these disorders exist. Digital phenotyping holds promise to helping guide in the clinical diagnoses and screening of ASD. OBJECTIVE To explore the feasibility of using the online social medi...

Background More than 3.5 million Americans live with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Major challenges persist in diagnosing ASD as no medical test exists to diagnose this disorder. Digital phenotyping holds promise to guide in the clinical diagnoses and screening of ASD. Objective This study aims to explore the feasibility of using the Web-based so...

Digital technologies hold promise for supporting the detection and management of schizophrenia. This exploratory study aimed to generate an initial understanding of whether patterns of communication about depression and anxiety on popular social media among individuals with schizophrenia are consistent with offline representations of the illness. F...

Rationale: Persons who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) face health inequities due to unwarranted discrimination against their sexual orientation or identity. An important contributor to LGBT health disparities is the inequitable or substandard care that LGBT individuals receive from hospitals. Objective: To investigate...

BACKGROUND People with schizophrenia experience elevated risk of suicide. Mental health symptoms, including depression and anxiety, contribute to increased risk of suicide. Digital technology could support efforts to detect suicide risk and inform suicide prevention efforts. OBJECTIVE This exploratory study examined the feasibility of monitoring o...

While media education and reduction programs have been proposed to prevent adverse health and academic outcomes related to heavy electronic media use among school-aged children, few have been formally piloted and evaluated. We used a quasi-experimental design to evaluate the effectiveness of Take the Challenge (TtC), a school-based media education/...

United States kindergarten measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination rates are typically reported at the state level by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The lack of local MMR data prevents identification of areas with low vaccination rates that would be vulnerable to the spread of disease. We collected county-level vaccination ra...

Novel approaches are needed to address elevated tobacco use among people with schizophrenia. This exploratory study examined the frequency, timing, and type of communication about tobacco-related content on Twitter among users who self-identify as having schizophrenia compared with users from the general population. Over a 200-day period from Janua...

To determine the longitudinal and cross-sectional associations between different types of electronic media use (mobile phones, TV, computers, video games, and music) and young adolescents' depressive symptoms, and to explore the potential for household media rules to reduce young people's depression. 126 young adolescents were recruited from the No...

Increased prevalence and penetration of cellphone and mobile Internet use have raised significant concerns about children's health and safety by offering new spaces for cyberbullying, harassment, and sexual misconduct. "Cyberhero Mobile Safety" is a videogame-based education program designed using tenets of the capacity model with the goal of insti...

Introduction: Native American children experience greater disparities in the number and magnitude of health-related diseases than White children. Multimedia-based health interventions may afford valuable opportunities for reaching this underserved demographic; however, limited data are available describing the use of media technologies among Nativ...

Introduction. Food marketing to children is evolving from television commercials to interactive digital games that promote branded food products. Limited research has found evidence that these games encourage children to choose and eat the types of foods advertised. This study investigates how the level of brand integration in a game impacts its ef...

Rapid growth in Smartphone use among children affords potential opportunities to target health behaviors such as dietary habits; however, few mobile health applications are specifically designed with these individuals in mind. This brief report describes our step-by-step approach towards developing a mobile health application for targeting nutritio...