Social media as a recruitment tactic in melanoma education and protective behaviors in Latino patients

Background: Universal skin cancer screening for the Latino population is impractical. Objectives: We focused on melanoma education by conducting an online education campaign and collected baseline, postintervention, and 3-month follow-up surveys to assess sun-protective behaviors. Methods: Participants were recruited through (1) social media ads and (2) emails sent to Mayo Clinic Latino patients. Results: Total social media impressions were 508,442 and 413,007 in Spanish and English, respectively. There were 18,790 and 11,731 clicks for the Spanish and English ads, respectively, resulting in 175 baseline survey responses. From email distribution, 4151 emails translated to 219 baseline participants. Of the 394 patients who participated in the baseline survey, 89 completed the postintervention survey, and 57 completed the 3-month follow-up survey (28 from social media and 29 Mayo Clinic patients). Social media provides a unique opportunity for the medical community to promote melanoma education, distribute content quickly, and provide medical education in disparate healthcare areas. Our Spanish ad click-through rate was 3.70% compared to 2.84% for English. The click-to-action rate was 0.57%, and the baseline-to-completion rate was 16.00%. Conclusions: Our study suggests social media could be a unique tool for distributing melanoma educational materials to Latino populations. The click-through rates for this study were several-fold higher than other studies' reported click-through rates (0.4%–0.93%). It is important to develop melanoma educational materials that are culturally relevant and focused on Latino populations that can provide persistent improvements in mitigating melanoma risk behaviors such as sunscreen application and self-skin examinations.