To study the quality of stroke education on YouTube™ in some of the most viewed videos.

Prior studies have shown that knowledge of stroke prevention and awareness of stroke symptoms remains poor in the general population. Large investments are regularly made by national healthcare agencies such as the Center for disease control (CDC) who invested $185 million in 2016 alone, towards community outreach. However, these efforts towards community outreach do not seem to make a significant impact on social media platforms. Social media has come to dominate as the leading choice for information consumption in the past decade. There are numerous large social media platforms (YouTube™, Facebook™, Instagram™, Snapchat™) of which YouTube™ registers an estimated 5 billion video views every day. In March 2018 Pew research reported nearly three quarters of adults in the US use YouTube™ of which 45% check-in daily. Although national agencies such as CDC, Heart and Stroke Canada have YouTube™ channels, their subscriber base is poor compared to individual contributors like Seeker, TED-Ed, Khan Academy.

We searched YouTube™ using keywords “stroke” and “What is a stroke”. This search yielded approximately 14 million videos and 6 million videos respectively of which we compiled the 60 most viewed videos. Videos with content displayed only in English were included. Videos less than 6 minutes were selected for our study based on research from MIT which showed highest viewer engagement limited to this timeline. We developed a Quality Score to assess the education content and accuracy provided in the videos.

Pending results, we will present our final data at AAN.

Social media needs to be considered as a major source of education and outreach. National healthcare agencies should invest in establishing a larger footprint on social media to assure high quality validated healthcare information is being provided to the public.