Study examines how to recruit stem cell donors with TikTok

A recent study by Canadian and U.S. researchers has shared new findings about how TikTok can be used to recruit young stem cell donors.

Brady Park, a Temerty Faculty of Medicine MD Program student, is one of the first authors of the study, which was published recently in The Lancet Haematology.

The research looks at how TikTok — a social media platform based on video-sharing — can be implemented to increase engagement of potential stem cell donors.

“There’s really a specific way to harness the power of TikTok to spread any public health message. Stem cell donation is just one example. This could easily be extended,” said Park, who did the research involved in the study while doing his undergraduate degree at Western University and his PhD in pharmacology & toxicology at Temerty Medicine, as part of his work with the Stem Cell Club. The student-led club has chapters at different university campuses across Canada, and runs drives to attract “young, healthy, diverse university students as potential stem cell donors,” said Park.

The club’s goal is to address racial disparity in access to matched unrelated stem cell donors, by signing up people interested in donating. The stem cells are needed by people who grapple with diseases like leukemia or sickle cell anemia.
 
The Lancet Haematology paper — a collaboration among Park and researchers at Yale University and the University of Texas — specifically looks at how best to create TikTok videos to capture the attention of young people online, to get them to consider donating haematopoietic stem cells.

For the study, researchers shared 30 TikToks that encouraged stem cell donation with 46 people, all of whom were aged from 17 to 35 years.

After participants watched the videos, the researchers organized focus groups where viewers could share their opinions about what they saw. Participants were from diverse backgrounds and reported watching TikTok videos a median of five hours per week.

The research took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2021, when TikTok was climbing in popularity.

Through their work listening to participants, researchers identified ways that TikTok videos trying to solicit stem cell donations could be most successful with their target audience — which Park says was a “trial-and-error” process.

Well-crafted TikToks could motivate people to sign up for donation, the researchers found.

“TikToks increased participants’ conviction to participate. This effect ranged in intensity, with some [participants] sharing they were more comfortable or more likely to register [for stem cell donation], and others more concretely stating they would register or donate,” the researchers wrote in their paper. 

The researchers noted that successful videos “prioritise entertainment value over educational content,” and avoid featuring people who “whether intentionally or not, display moral superiority or exude arrogance or condescension.”

TikTok videos that have “the use of fast-pacing, build-up to a climax, or surprise endings or plot twists” are also effective, say the researchers. One participant told the researchers that a video had two to three seconds to capture their attention before they scrolled away.

“Participants cautioned TikToks should avoid sounding fake, ‘extraordinarily happy,’ or like advertisements as this might increase their suspicion such TikToks have ‘ulterior motives,’" the researchers wrote. Some participants said they would quickly scroll away from such videos, they added.

“Participants expressed discomfort or discontent towards TikToks with arrogant, condescending, or egotistical tones, which were felt to be counterproductive and ‘annoying,’” the researchers wrote.

Viewers told researchers they liked videos that featured people, “especially those from the same demographic group as the intended audience,” and that implemented “Generation Z trends and dances,” as long we they were used contextually and not out-of-date.

For Park, the takeaway for health researchers is that social media can drive important public engagement, when executed in the right way. For example, he says the best TikTok videos were very short.

“It’s not a value judgement of whether that’s good or bad, it’s a matter of whether we can cater to that, and take advantage of that,” he says. “Young people are people. Young adults are adults. They make up such a big portion of our population, and it’s very important to educate them, and meet them where they’re at.”

He said the paper has important implications for anyone in government, or leadership in public health organizations, in creating content that will resonate with potential supporters. He is proud of the study’s publication in The Lancet Haematology, building on earlier work in the same area.

“It’s a dream for anyone in medicine. I’ve done graduate school, so I know how hard it is to publish any paper,” he said. “It’s a huge honour.”

This research was funded by the Stem Cell Club.