Identifying the Knowledge Structure and Trends of Outreach in Public Health Care: A Text Network Analysis and Topic Modeling.

Sooyeon Park,Jinkyung Park

doi:10.3390/ijerph18179309

Abstract

Outreach programs are considered a key strategy for providing services to underserved populations and play a central role in delivering health-care services. To address this challenge, knowledge relevant to global health outreach programs has recently been expanded. The aims of this study were to analyze the knowledge structure and understand the trends in aspects over time and across regions using text network analysis with NetMiner 4.0. Data analysis by frequency, time and region showed that the central keywords such as patient, care, service and community were found to be highly related to the area, target population, purpose and type of services within the knowledge structure of outreach. As a result of performing topic modeling, knowledge structure in this area consisted of five topics: patient-centered care, HIV care continuum, services related to a specific disease, community-based health-care services and research and education on health programs. Our results newly identified that patient-centered care, specific disease and population have been growing more crucial for all times and countries by the examination of major trends in health-care related outreach research. These findings help health professionals, researchers and policymakers in nursing and public health fields in understanding and developing health-care-related outreach practices and suggest future research direction.

Highlights

Over the last few decades, health disparities have remained a major public health concern worldwide
Regarding the knowledge structure of outreach research, we found that six central keywords—“patient”, “care”, “service”, “community”, “health” and “program”—were highly related to other keywords (Figure 2)
We were able to derive the implications of the importance of outreach research through a variety of approaches including period and country specific analysis as well as topic modeling

Summary

Introduction

Over the last few decades, health disparities have remained a major public health concern worldwide. There has been a sharp rise in the number of global health outreach programs to address this challenge in the disadvantaged communities [2,3]. Outreach programs are considered a key strategy for providing services to underserved or hard-to-reach groups and play a central role in delivering health-care services to them [5]. Among other available approaches, outreach services can enhance access to health workers and improve overall retention even at the country level [6], and previous studies have reported their effectiveness in addressing disparities through customized interventions [7]. Community health-care professionals have frequent contact with at-risk populations and play a pivotal role in servicing them, by providing treatment and medical resources and through education. Health-care professionals’ knowledge about outreach and their effective management skills are important factors for determining the quality of outreach services

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion