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Online Health Communities the Impact of Social Support on the Health State of People with Chronic Illness

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Smart Health (ICSH 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10347))

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Abstract

People with chronic illnesses are engaged in the lifelong management of their disease and with this management comes the need for emotional support, informational support, and companionship from others, particularly those who have the same disease and can relate to their situation. More often people are seeking this social support through online health communities. The concern is that online health communities may not have a positive impact on the health condition since anyone can be providing information and the information provided may not be valid. We utilize an objective measure of the health condition to determine the impact social support, given and received, in an online health community has on the user’s health condition over time.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Information Technology, Pamplin College of Business Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 24060, USA

    Zachary Davis, Qianzhou Du, G. Alan Wang, Christopher Zobel & Lara Khansa

Authors
  1. Zachary Davis
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  2. Qianzhou Du
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  3. G. Alan Wang
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  4. Christopher Zobel
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  5. Lara Khansa
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zachary Davis .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

    Hsinchun Chen

  2. University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

    Daniel Dajun Zeng

  3. Department of Management Information System, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA

    Elena Karahanna

  4. University of Texas, Richardson, Texas, USA

    Indranil Bardhan

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© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

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Davis, Z., Du, Q., Alan Wang, G., Zobel, C., Khansa, L. (2017). Online Health Communities the Impact of Social Support on the Health State of People with Chronic Illness. In: Chen, H., Zeng, D., Karahanna, E., Bardhan, I. (eds) Smart Health. ICSH 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10347. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67964-8_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67964-8_18

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-67963-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-67964-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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