Understanding Health Care Barriers Using Reddit and Artificial Intelligence

ALBANY, N.Y. (Aug. 26, 2026) — Health insurance, in-network providers, deductibles—for many people, understanding the terminology of the U.S. health care system can feel overwhelming. To get help, some are turning to websites and online forums, where they can hear directly from other individuals about their firsthand experience with the health care system. Arissa Spitalny, a PhD student at UAlbany’s School of Social Welfare, is analyzing these online posts to better understand the barriers people face within the health care system.

Spitalny’s work uses Reddit, a popular discussion website where communities called subreddits are created that allow users to post about a particular topic and reply to posts.

“Individuals who may not feel comfortable being vulnerable in traditional person-to-person interactions have a space to anonymously voice concerns, ask for advice or even just vent to feel a sense of community and/or support,” Spitalny said. “In addition, since Reddit is not a platform intended for research, conversations and interaction are organic, making them particularly useful for researchers like me.”

Over one million Reddit posts from a subreddit called AskDocs are being examined by Spitalny to better understand how people describe the barriers they face with health care. This subreddit, which describes itself as “for asking specific personal health questions about yourself or family members,” was created in 2013 and has over half a million weekly visitors. Spitalny is looking at posts that specifically mention health insurance.

“Through this work, I hope to contribute to a better understanding of health care access barriers and the role social work can play in improving care navigation, connecting people to resources and advancing health equity,” she said. 

Spitalny’s mentor, Assistant Professor Cheng Ren, focuses on using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) techniques and open-access data. With his guidance, Spitalny created an AI prompt that reviewed the Reddit posts and classified approximately 15,000 of them that mentioned health insurance. The AI was provided with 300 sample posts that were manually reviewed by Spitalny to ensure the system knew how to label and review the posts. 

“Human coding is much more time-consuming, so AI made it possible to analyze the full dataset efficiently,” said Spitalny, who is now in the analysis and writing stage of her study. Over the next year, she will be interpreting patterns in the data collected from Reddit, including race, gender and demographic location to better understand barriers in the health care system. 

“My Reddit study allows me to look more closely at the lived experiences behind those patterns by examining the support individuals seek online,” she said. “In the future, I hope to expand the study beyond insurance posts to examine other health care barriers as well."