UMBC ebiquity
The 2024 ACM Workshop on Secure and Trustworthy Cyber-Physical Systems (SaT-CPS '24)
Exploring the Impact of Increased Health Information Accessibility in Cyberspace on Trust and Self-care Practices
June 21, 2024
More health information is in cyberspace than ever before, presenting
both opportunities and challenges for health information
seeking and self-care practices, particularly in underserved populations
who face health disparities for various reasons, including
limited healthcare access and high costs. We have investigated the
effect of increased health information accessibility in cyberspace on
self-care practices and trust in underserved populations of African
descent by surveying how increased health information accessibility
in cyberspace affects self-care practices and trust in the underserved.
Our study observed that online health information seeking is pervasive,
growing exponentially and driven by convenience and accessibility
of resources, regardless of access to healthcare providers.
However, participants expressed concerns about trustworthiness,
accuracy, and potential misdiagnosis or inappropriate treatment
choices. So, it is important to focus on enhancing the trustworthiness
and quality of online health information, implementing
verification mechanisms to reduce misinformation, and addressing
underlying factors driving self-medication.
The paper details the result of our study and contributes to
the existing literature by providing a deeper understanding of the
motivations, experiences, and outcomes of online health information
use and self-care practices among underserved communities
of African descent. Our investigation also highlights the need for
further research and interventions to address the challenges and
opportunities that arise from the increased accessibility of health
information in cyberspace and self-care practices in underserved
populations.
InProceedings
Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Open Access at https://doi.org/10.1145/3643650.3658611
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