Clinical trial NCT04644328: The Doctors for Coronavirus Prevention Project Thanksgiving / Christmas Messaging Campaign
Official title: The Doctors for Coronavirus Prevention Project Thanksgiving / Christmas Messaging Campaign
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Covid19
Lead sponsor: National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
name: Harvard University
name: Massachusetts General Hospital
name: Yale University
name: Stanford University
First posted: 2020-11-25
Enrollment: 820
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: SEQUENTIAL
Intervention model description: A total of 13 states, comprising 829 counties, centrally report COVID-19 cases at the ZCTA level. Two separate experiments were run within the study, one around Thanksgiving and one around Christmas. For each experiment, approximately half of the counties were randomized to high-intensity treatment with the remaining randomized to low-intensity treatment. In high-intensity counties, 3/4 of ZCTAs were treated and 1/4 were not. In low-intensity counties, 1/4 of ZCTAs were treated and 3/4 were not. In treated ZCTAs, Facebook users received ads with messages from physicians and other health personnel urging them to stay home and wear masks to stop the spread of COVID-19. Users in non-treated ZCTAs received no such ads. After exclusions, 820 counties were randomized to high- or low-intensity treatment during Thanksgiving and 767 counties were during Christmas.
Primary purpose: PREVENTION

Brief summary: Facebook ads with physician-delivered videos were shown before the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and focused on staying safe during the COVID pandemic by limiting travel and mask-wearing.

Detailed description: The investigators used Facebook ads to show a 20 second video clip recorded by Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard and Lynn Community health center doctors (6 people in all) to approximately 20,000,000 Facebook users. The ads will be shown before the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday and will focus on staying safe - limiting travel and mask-wearing. The investigators will randomize exposure to the ad campaign at the ZIP code or county level to ask:

Do the videos change mobility and Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday travel? Do they reduce the spread of COVID-19?

Are there spillover impacts from the video messages? For example, if individuals decide to stay home, then do the geographical regions that tend to be visited by people from treated areas experience any effects, either through information spillovers or through a reduction in travel?

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

- Individuals viewing the ads must be Facebook users, 18 years and older. Facebook will decide specifically which users receive the messages within a target geographical area (zip or county).

Exclusion Criteria:

-

Primary outcomes:
measure: Facebook Movement Metric
timeFrame: November 26, 2020 (Thanksgiving); December 24-25, 2020 (Christmas); February 2-29, 2020 (Baseline benchmark)
measure: Percentage Leaving Home on Day of Holiday
timeFrame: November 26, 2020 (Thanksgiving); December 24-25, 2020 (Christmas)
measure: Inverse Hyperbolic Sine of COVID-19 Cases
timeFrame: December 1-14 (Thanksgiving arms) and January 1-14 (Christmas arms)
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Knowledge of COVID-19 Prevention Message (Recall of ad, Intent to Travel, Mask Wearing and Beliefs About Travel)
timeFrame: up to one month
measure: Average Number of Tiles People Occupy (Mobility Measure)
timeFrame: up to one month
measure: Percentage of Eligible Participants Only Observed in a Single Level-16 Bing Tile (no Change in Movement)
timeFrame: up to one month
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Cambridge
country: United States
facility: JPAL North America
state: Massachusetts
Study officials:
References:
citation: Breza E, Stanford FC, Alsan M, Alsan B, Banerjee A, Chandrasekhar AG, Eichmeyer S, Glushko T, Goldsmith-Pinkham P, Holland K, Hoppe E, Karnani M, Liegl S, Loisel T, Ogbu-Nwobodo L, Olken BA, Torres C, Vautrey PL, Warner ET, Wootton S, Duflo E. Effects of a large-scale social media advertising campaign on holiday travel and COVID-19 infections: a cluster randomized controlled trial. Nat Med. 2021 Sep;27(9):1622-1628. doi: 10.1038/s41591-021-01487-3. Epub 2021 Aug 19.