A Web-Based Social Network Analysis System for Guiding Behavioral Interventions Delivery in Medically Underserved Communities

Social network analysis has been adopted in multiple research fields. In healthcare, previous research showed that social network analysis results can be used to guide healthcare professionals to provide health interventions to a selected population but achieve a bigger scale impact in the population. In this work, a web-based social network platform was developed to support social workers to conduct social network data collection in medically underserved communities. The collected data can be analyzed and the results can be used to guide the selection of participants for behavioral interventions. A usability study was conducted with social workers to evaluate this web-based social network platform. A social network analysis was also performed on the data collected from residents in one selected street block. The study results indicate that the web-based social network platform makes it efficient to collect social network data and convenient to perform the social network analysis. The social network analysis results are also evaluated empirically, which indicates that the results are accurate and may be used to guide the delivery of behavioral interventions.