On December 3rd, ICHAD and SMART Africa were proud to welcome Dr. Patricia Cavazos-Rehg to our speaker series. Dr. Cavazos-Rehg is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis and a Co-Leader with Dr. Fred Ssewamala on the T37 NIMHD-funded LEAD training grant (Training LEADers to Accelerate Global Mental Health Disparities Research). The presentation, entitled “Leveraging Technology to Impact Health” focused on her research utilizing mHealth (mobile health) to meet health needs through social media. Dr. Cavazos-Rehg started with an overview of the prevalence of smartphone and social media use, noting that in the United States, 94% of 18-29-year-olds have smartphones, and worldwide, 2.65 billion people used social media in 2018. While the population seems ripe for mHealth intervention opportunities, she explained that few mHealth apps on the market are evidence-based. In 2014, Dr. Cavazos-Rehg began an NIH-funded study investigating what people say about substance use on social networking sites (SNS). She found that on Twitter, pro-marijuana tweets were 15 times more prevalent than anti-marijuana tweets and that drinking alcohol was an even more popular topic; 54% of tweets that mentioned alcohol referenced heavy or frequent drinking. With many teens using SNS, this promotion of drug use behavior could have an impact on behavioral health. However, Dr. Cavazos-Rehg explained that social media could also be leveraged for health interventions surrounding mental health and substance use. In addition to this study, Dr. Cavazos-Rehg is currently working with ICHAD/SMART Africa on an mHealth study aiming to increase antiretroviral therapy (ART) treatment adherence and reduce depression symptoms in adolescents living with HIV in Uganda. Our heartfelt thanks to Dr. Cavazos-Rehg for an excellent presentation on the new frontier of health interventions!
