“Tell us what’s going on”: Exploring the information needs of pregnant and post-partum women in Australia during the pandemic with ‘Tweets’, ‘Threads’, and women’s views

PLOS ONE RESEARCH ARTICLE “Tell us what’s going on”: Exploring the information needs of pregnant and postpartum women in Australia during the pandemic with ‘Tweets’, ‘Threads’, and women’s views a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 Cassandra Caddy ID1☯, Marc Cheong1,2☯, Megan S. C. Lim1☯, Robert Power1☯, Joshua P. Vogel1,3☯, Zoe Bradfield1,4,5☯, Benjamin Coghlan1☯, Caroline S. E. Homer1,3☯, Alyce N. Wilson1,3☯* 1 Burnet Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, 2 School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia, 3 School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia, 4 Curtin University, Bentley, WA, Australia, 5 King Edward Memorial Hospital, Subiaco, WA, Australia ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. * OPEN ACCESS Citation: Caddy C, Cheong M, Lim MSC, Power R, Vogel JP, Bradfield Z, et al. (2023) “Tell us what’s going on”: Exploring the information needs of pregnant and post-partum women in Australia during the pandemic with ‘Tweets’, ‘Threads’, and women’s views. PLoS ONE 18(1): e0279990. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279990 Editor: Shahzad Ali Gill, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur Pakistan, PAKISTAN Received: February 8, 2022 Accepted: December 19, 2022 Published: January 13, 2023 Copyright: © 2023 Caddy et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: Due to concerns about maintaining the privacy of research participants it is not possible to make the data publicly available. Furthermore, we do not have approval from the Alfred Hospital Ethics Committee to upload the data into a public repository. However, the corresponding author can provide additional information on reasonable request, pending approval from the Alfred Hospital Ethics Committee. In regards to data availability and data access requests, please refer to the Scientific Abstract Introduction The provision of maternity services in Australia has been significantly disrupted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many changes were initiated quickly, often with rapid dissemination of information to women. The aim of this study was to better understand what information and messages were circulating regarding COVID-19 and pregnancy in Australia and potential information gaps. Methods This study adopted a qualitative approach using social media and interviews. A data analytics tool (TIGER-C19) was used to extract data from social media platforms Reddit and Twitter from June to July 2021 (in the middle of the third COVID-19 wave in Australia). A total of 21 individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with those who were, or had been, pregnant in Australia since March 2020. Social media data were analysis via inductive content analysis and interview data were thematically analysed. Results Social media provided a critical platform for sharing and seeking information, as well as highlighting attitudes of the community towards COVID-19 vaccines in pregnancy. Women interviewed described wanting further information on the risks COVID-19 posed to themselves and their babies, and greater familiarity with the health service during pregnancy, in which they would labour and give birth. Health providers were a trusted source of PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279990 January 13, 2023 1 / 16 PLOS ONE Integrity Officer (). Great lengths have been taken to de-identify individual participants and social media users to protect their privacy and maintain confidentiality. The research participants are pregnant and postnatal women who represent a vulnerable population during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are excerpts from these interviews available as quotes throughout the manuscript, as well as paraphrased social media posts. Funding: This study was funded by Burnet Institute Know C19 Hub. The information needs of pregnant and post-partum women in Australia during the pandemic information. Communication strategies that allowed participants to engage in real-time interactive discussions were preferred. A real or perceived lack of information led participants to turn to informal sources, increasing the potential for exposure to misinformation. Conclusion It is vital that health services communicate effectively with pregnant women, early and often throughout public health crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This was particularly important during periods of increased restrictions on accessing hospital services. Information and communication strategies need to be clear, consistent, timely and accessible to reduce reliance on informal and potentially inaccurate sources. Competing interests: The authors have declared no competing interests exist. Introduction Australia recorded its first case of COVID-19 in late January 2020 with community transmission occurring soon after [1]. In response, the Australian government rapidly implemented several risk reduction measures including travel restrictions, wearing of masks, imposing density limits in public and private spaces and periodic community lockdown measures [1]. Many non-essential health services were closed or where possible, delivered online. Despite being an essential service, maternity and newborn care was significantly disrupted by these changes. Face-to-face antenatal care was replaced by telehealth in many jurisdictions, antenatal education classes were cancelled or moved online, and limits on the number of support people who could attend ultrasound scans, labour, birth and the postnatal ward were introduced [2–4]. Whilst pregnant women are not more likely to contract COVID-19 compared to non-pregnant women, if they do so they are at higher risk of death or developing severe disease from SARS-CoV-2 infection, including higher rates of intensive care unit (ICU) admission and invasive ventilation when compared to non-pregnant women [5]. Globally, increasing maternal mortality rates have been seen in location such as Brazil and Mexico as a result of the pandemic [6, 7]. In addition, babies of women with COVID-19 infection during pregnancy have higher rates of preterm birth and admission to neonatal ICU [5, 8]. As SARS-CoV-2 spread rapidly worldwide, health systems were in a constant state of flux–reacting, adapting and mitigating in response to the novel coronavirus [9]. Clear, timely and targeted information was essential to support pregnant women in making healthcare-related decisions during an uncertain and rapidly evolving time. Social media represented an ideal platform to spread information quickly and has been used to rapidly disseminate information during previous public health emergencies and disease outbreaks, including Ebola, H1N1 (swine flu) and MERS-CoV outbreaks [10–13]. In a (...truncated)