BACKGROUND Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) is a chronic disease that can be managed in part through healthy behaviours. However, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted how people managed their condition. Using social media forums and analytics through Patient-Generated Health Data (PGHD) presents an opportunity to understand the health behaviours from the perspective of the patient.
OBJECTIVE Our objective is to understand how the health behaviours and attitudes of people living with T2D were impacted by the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic by examining Reddit forums (using PGHD) for people living with T2D.
METHODS Data from the Reddit forums related to T2D from January 2018 to early March 2021 were downloaded, and Support Vector Machines (SVMs) were used to classify if a post was made in the context of the pandemic. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling was performed to gather topics of discussion amongst the entire dataset and a subsequent iteration was performed to gather topics of discussion specific to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sentiment Analysis using the Valence Aware Dictionary for sEntiment Reasoning (VADER )algorithm was performed to gauge attitudes towards the pandemic.
RESULTS Of all posts, topics of discussion were classified into themes of Managing Lifestyle, Managing Blood Glucose, Obtaining Diabetes Care, and Coping & Receiving Support. Amongst the COVID-specific posts topics of discussion were Coping with Poor Mental Health, Accessing Doctor & Medications and Controlling Blood Glucose, Changing Food Habits during Pandemic, Impact of Stress of Blood Glucose Levels, Changing Status of Employment & Insurance, Risk of COVID Complications. Overall, posts classified as COVID-related had were associated with lower sentiment than those classified as “noncovid.”
CONCLUSIONS Topics of discussion gauged from the Reddit forums provide a holistic perspective of the impact of the pandemic on people living with T2D. Overall, the early stages of the pandemic negatively impacted the attitudes of people living with T2D.