Tina D Purnat

Public health

Healthy information environment

Infodemic management

Digital and health policy

Health information and informatics

Tina D Purnat
Tina D Purnat
Tina D Purnat
Tina D Purnat
Tina D Purnat
Tina D Purnat
Tina D Purnat

Public health

Healthy information environment

Infodemic management

Digital and health policy

Health information and informatics

4/ Six steps to building a business case to fact-check in health

  1. Foster relationships with the health sector, including Ministry of Health, Institute of Public Health/CDC, medical associations, health focused civil society organizations, health focused alliances, and academic groups focused on public health. 
  2. Understand current public health needs and priorities and potential avenues of funding. 
    • The most critical piece is defining the public health question you can help answer, and researching which organizations could fund the work to do so. (e.g. “How do we address reproductive health misinformation on TikTok targeting adolescent boys and young men in Tagalog?”)
  3. Identify and grow your area of comparative advantage. 
    • For example, do you have staff with specific expertise in health topic, experience with a target audience (e.g. immigrant communities), or has existing partnerships you can leverage? What new partnerships or skills or resources would you need to gain an advantage?
    • Conducting a SWOT analysis with your team and inviting health experts to join may be a helpful exercise.
  4. Develop ideas to build capacity or provide expertise to health sector
    • You can offer a services such as factchecking or developing infodemic insights, or conduct research or evaluation, or training, such as training health promotions staff, or serve as a strategic partner to develop plans, foster networks. 
    • Develop a business case that includes the above, and describe ways of working, values, and what you would need from the health organization to successfully partner with them.
  5. Beta test your concept with public health people
    • Public health people speak a different language and have different objectives and indicators of success compared to a fact checker. It’s important to test out your pitch on a small group of public health people on the chosen topic.
  6. Be prepared to educate your audience, and frame ways of collaboration that makes sense for your organization
    • Be also prepared to learn about public health and way its bureaucracy works (often slow, many people involved, lots of procedure and reporting), but successful collaboration can results in big public health rewards.

See next article: 5/ Public health challenges to look out for and opportunities for fact-checkers

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