The Power of Social Media Influencer Campaigns to Improve Black Women’s Knowledge and Awareness of Environmental Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals: Surveys of Instagram Users (Preprint)

Abstract

Black women are disproportionately affected by hormone-related health conditions, which may result from higher exposures to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in consumer products. EDCs are chemicals that interfere with the body’s natural hormones.

The Product Options in Women-Engaged Research (POWER) project was developed to educate Black women about EDCs. We assessed the impact of social media influencer (SMI) campaigns on knowledge and awareness of EDCs and intentions to change product-use behaviors.

We recruited seven SMIs to engage with their audiences about EDC-related information on Instagram. The SMIs attended a workshop to learn about EDCs in consumer products and then created Instagram content to share with their audiences. We surveyed SMIs at baseline and 1-month after they shared EDC-related content. SMI audiences were surveyed cross-sectionally before and after the SMIs posted EDC-related social media content. We evaluated social media engagement and analyzed the impact of the campaign on SMIs and their audience.

The social media posts reached over 16,000 accounts and elicited over 28,000 engagements (e.g., views, likes, shares). SMIs’ EDC knowledge and awareness increased after attending the workshop and sharing newly created content, and the SMIs had greater intentions to avoid EDCs at follow-up than at baseline. Engagement with the social media content about EDCs also led to positive outcomes among SMI audiences, and particularly impacted intentions to engage in exposure reduction behaviors. Eighty percent of follow-up survey respondents reported that they will always consider a company’s chemical policy and product ingredients when shopping compared to less than 50% of baseline survey respondents (P<.001), and more follow-up respondents than baseline respondents self-reported an intention to avoid parabens (33% vs 15%, P<.001), bisphenol A (25% vs 15%, P=.032), per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (17% vs 9%, P<.001), and fragrance (5.9% vs 2.0%, P=.082).

Our findings demonstrate researcher-SMI collaborations can be employed to reach large audiences of Black women, improve knowledge about EDCs, and promote intentions to change behaviors to reduce exposures to EDCs.