Social network analysis predicts health behaviours and self-reported health in African villages.

The provision of healthcare in rural African communities is a highly complex and largely unsolved problem. Two main difficulties are the identification of individuals that are most likely affected by disease and the prediction of responses to health interventions. Social networks have been shown to...

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Autores principales:	Goylette F Chami, Sebastian E Ahnert, Maarten J Voors, Andreas A Kontoleon
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2014
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/ab6605f230a9411fa4627ed35178b3b9
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:ab6605f230a9411fa4627ed35178b3b92021-11-25T06:06:46ZSocial network analysis predicts health behaviours and self-reported health in African villages.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0103500https://doaj.org/article/ab6605f230a9411fa4627ed35178b3b92014-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/25072820/?tool=EBIhttps://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203The provision of healthcare in rural African communities is a highly complex and largely unsolved problem. Two main difficulties are the identification of individuals that are most likely affected by disease and the prediction of responses to health interventions. Social networks have been shown to capture health outcomes in a variety of contexts. Yet, it is an open question as to what extent social network analysis can identify and distinguish among households that are most likely to report poor health and those most likely to respond to positive behavioural influences. We use data from seven highly remote, post-conflict villages in Liberia and compare two prominent network measures: in-degree and betweenness. We define in-degree as the frequency in which members from one household are named by another household as a friends. Betweenness is defined as the proportion of shortest friendship paths between any two households in a network that traverses a particular household. We find that in-degree explains the number of ill family members, whereas betweenness explains engagement in preventative health. In-degree and betweenness independently explained self-reported health and behaviour, respectively. Further, we find that betweenness predicts susceptibility to, instead of influence over, good health behaviours. The results suggest that targeting households based on network measures rather than health status may be effective for promoting the uptake of health interventions in rural poor villages.Goylette F ChamiSebastian E AhnertMaarten J VoorsAndreas A KontoleonPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 9, Iss 7, p e103500 (2014)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Goylette F Chami Sebastian E Ahnert Maarten J Voors Andreas A Kontoleon Social network analysis predicts health behaviours and self-reported health in African villages.
description	The provision of healthcare in rural African communities is a highly complex and largely unsolved problem. Two main difficulties are the identification of individuals that are most likely affected by disease and the prediction of responses to health interventions. Social networks have been shown to capture health outcomes in a variety of contexts. Yet, it is an open question as to what extent social network analysis can identify and distinguish among households that are most likely to report poor health and those most likely to respond to positive behavioural influences. We use data from seven highly remote, post-conflict villages in Liberia and compare two prominent network measures: in-degree and betweenness. We define in-degree as the frequency in which members from one household are named by another household as a friends. Betweenness is defined as the proportion of shortest friendship paths between any two households in a network that traverses a particular household. We find that in-degree explains the number of ill family members, whereas betweenness explains engagement in preventative health. In-degree and betweenness independently explained self-reported health and behaviour, respectively. Further, we find that betweenness predicts susceptibility to, instead of influence over, good health behaviours. The results suggest that targeting households based on network measures rather than health status may be effective for promoting the uptake of health interventions in rural poor villages.
format	article
author	Goylette F Chami Sebastian E Ahnert Maarten J Voors Andreas A Kontoleon
author_facet	Goylette F Chami Sebastian E Ahnert Maarten J Voors Andreas A Kontoleon
author_sort	Goylette F Chami
title	Social network analysis predicts health behaviours and self-reported health in African villages.
title_short	Social network analysis predicts health behaviours and self-reported health in African villages.
title_full	Social network analysis predicts health behaviours and self-reported health in African villages.
title_fullStr	Social network analysis predicts health behaviours and self-reported health in African villages.
title_full_unstemmed	Social network analysis predicts health behaviours and self-reported health in African villages.
title_sort	social network analysis predicts health behaviours and self-reported health in african villages.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2014
url	https://doaj.org/article/ab6605f230a9411fa4627ed35178b3b9
work_keys_str_mv	AT goylettefchami socialnetworkanalysispredictshealthbehavioursandselfreportedhealthinafricanvillages AT sebastianeahnert socialnetworkanalysispredictshealthbehavioursandselfreportedhealthinafricanvillages AT maartenjvoors socialnetworkanalysispredictshealthbehavioursandselfreportedhealthinafricanvillages AT andreasakontoleon socialnetworkanalysispredictshealthbehavioursandselfreportedhealthinafricanvillages
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Social network analysis predicts health behaviours and self-reported health in African villages.

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