Harmful narratives, which include mis-, dis- and malinformation, deceptive marketing, low quality scientific papers, outdated information, and people’s concerns are found on many health topics that affect all parts of the world.
It’s important to note that the goal in addressing health misinformation or harmful narratives isn’t to completely eradicate all negative discussion about health.
- Rather, we know that people make decisions about their health based on information they receive from sources and people they trust. Sometimes those can be lived experiences or questions people have, who share this with family and friends. These are not misinformation and can’t be debunked. If you try to debunk people’s lived experiences you are negating people’s experiences and are eroding trust in the health system.
- On the other side, there are plenty of sources of low quality information about health that include deceptive marketing for non-evidence-based treatments or cures, or other other low-quality types of health information mentioned above.
The majority of health-related low quality information or misinformation that is shared is shared by well-meaning people who believe it to be true and rarely is misinformation originally generated with some kind of organized agenda.
Health disinformation is often linked to profiteering or promoting a certain anti-health agenda, which goes beyond influence campaigns.
Public health professionals often break down a health issue into how it impacts different levels of society, such as individual, family, community, health system, society, etc.
- The reason why some narratives are harmful to health is that they can affect a person’s confidence and trust in health products, health guidance, health workers and health system. This might contribute to a person’s lowered perception of risk from a disease or health issue, promoting buying or using non-recommended treatments, ignoring health guidance from their healthcare provider, continuing behaviors that are harmful to health, advocating against health guidance to others, or sharing this misinformation onwards to people who may be vulnerable.
- Beyond the individual level, harmful health-related narratives can also impact communities, health systems, and societies. If misinformation spreads in a community, about a particular health topic or health service, it might influence a community’s willingness to seek health services or trust the health system. For example, if there’s a rumor that undocumented migrants will be arrested if they seek a vaccine, that community might choose to not have themselves or their children vaccinated.
- Misinformation can also affect health workers who are also exposed to it, may believe in it or find it difficult to address their patient’s questions, concerns, and misinformation.
- Also, narratives around distrust of health workers may lead to violence.
- On the societal level, many health topics discussed might lead to stigmatization or racism or other type kind of hate speech if the health issue affects a specific group of people that might be demonized or scapegoated.
Public health progammes prioritize acting on threats that pose highest health risk to the most vulnerable parts of the population.
- It’s important to note as a fact-checker that harmful health narratives have much wider effects than simply debunking individual pieces of misinformation might suggest.
- Often harmful health narratives affect specific groups of vulnerable people, more so than the general population. Special attention needs to be paid to these people. For example, people with disabilities face challenges in both seeking health information and seeking healthcare access. Often, information and services are not available in locations, formats, and channels that are accessible. This is double true for people with disabilities, who come from lower income households, or have some other vulnerability such as lower level of literacy, weak access to health system, weak human rights protections.
- Any harmful narratives that is particularly concerning for this population is concerning for the health department and should be concerning to you too. When it comes to prioritizing which narratives to address, focus on the most wide-spread narratives, but those who have potential for greatest harm to the most vulnerable group of people.
Health research is constantly evolving in all fields. There’s always new updated guidance, new treatments, therapies, and new advice. Sometimes these are different between countries, which creates a lot of additional questions and concerns when people discuss these differences and how they relate to them on the internet and on social media.
Each of these health topics are discussed by non-health professionals, online and offline. It’s natural when people are worried about a health condition that they seek information from a variety of sources.
Happily, across the world, health professionals are still considered the most trusted source of health information. Most people tend to listen to their provider, which is a one-on-one interpersonal relationship. In public health, health departments focus on addressing health behaviors that individuals have that also have population level effects. For example, someone researching about their breast cancer diagnosis and treatment online will be looking at different places and exposed to different authoritative guidance than someone looking for information about STI testing or quitting smoking.
Fact-checking organizations have worked on topics from many different areas of health. It’s important to know that different health topics are associated with different health programs and parts of the health department or Ministry of Health. Therefore, speaking to only one collaborator you have within the health system might not open doors to all departments that you might be able to partner with and who may have unique needs for your skill sets.
See next article: 3/ A health department’s functions and how fact-checkers can work with some of these functions
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