Abstract
BACKGROUND: Social media has become a new channel for information exchange in recent years. WeChat official account (WOA) is now widely adopted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for successful information distribution and diffusion online. We aimed to identify features of the most popular articles pushed by WOAs of the China's CDC that are associated with article influence. METHODS: The most popular articles per month between January 2017 and December 2019 were collected through the monthly published influence list of the CDC's WOA. Descriptive characteristics of articles were examined and the amount of reads and likes was converted into the WeChat communication index (WCI) which reflected the article's influence. Univariate and multiple linear regression analyses were applied to identify factors associated with article influence. RESULTS: A total of 720 most influential articles from 76 WOAs operated by 69 CDCs were selected for analysis. "Suzhou Vaccination", "China CDC News" and "Guangdong CDC" were the three top WOAs pushing the most quantities of popular articles. The average reads, likes and WCI of all articles were 43115.18, 355.82, and 4363.38, respectively. The article content, pushing year, and season were significantly associated with the article's influence. Sexually transmitted diseases [b = 207.57, 95 % confidence interval (CI): 82.23-332.91] and immunology (b = 123.16, 95 % CI: 39.65-206.67) articles obtained the highest impact. CONCLUSION: Our findings are considered helpful for CDCs in improving and enhancing the article content that expands the coverage of health information dissemination. CDCs can make use of the WOAs for formulating, implementing, and refining plans pertinent to public health matters.