(MENAFN- PRovoke) Nearly five years after COVID completely transformed the way people around the world think about their health, communicators say a pandemic of mis- and disinformation is impacting the profession's ability to connect with stakeholders around scientific advancements and empower them with accurate health information. A panel discussion at this week's PRovoke Global, led by Real Chemistry group president of corporate affairs Sherry Pudloski, examined the challenges and offered some solutions.

Introducing the panel, Pudloski delineated the scope of the problem.“If you open your phone each day, you'll see some mis and disinformation, and some of it's coming from some really trusted sources. So it really is time for us to talk about how we need to depoliticize health.

“Health is good for people. It doesn't have a political agenda. As communicators in positions of authority, we have a deep responsibility to rebuild consumer confidence in scientific information.”

How the Pandemic Changed Everything

“Let's just like, take a step back and go back to 2019, 2020,” says Gulden Mesara, founding partner at M&D Advisors, and a veteran of communications roles at Pfizer, Abbott, AbbVie, and Walgreens Boots Alliance.“In the beginning, it seemed health and science was on the front pages in the way that it seemed like there might be new respect for science.”

But as more and more conflicting advice began to enter the conversation-about masking, distancing, how the virus was transmitted, whether schools and workplaces should be closed-and as it became unclear what advice was coming from scientists and what was coming from politics, things changed.

There was a disconnect between how experts saw the evolving advice and how it was received by the public.

“I distinctly remember the moment that the mask mandate recommendation changed, and I thought, good, the science is working,” Erin O'Malley, executive director at the Coalition for Trust in Health & Science, recalls.“You're doing research, we're learning more, we're going to be safer, we're going to come out of this.

“That was also a pivot point for many Americans to say, you got it wrong from day one, I can never trust you again.”

Science Evolves: That's It's Strength-and a Challenge

O'Malley explains the disconnect between the experts and the general public:“Science evolves. Science is based on curiosity. Science is based on failures. We have scientific innovation today because of failures from yesterday, and most people don't understand that.

“As we communicate science, it's very hard for our field that public health officials, scientists and doctors and medical professionals lean into ambiguity, which is something we absolutely had to do during Covid. it can be very hard to communicate effectively the ambiguity of the evolving nature of science.”

Adds Mesara,“That led to what we're talking about now, this continuum of distrust. What do I trust? Who do I trust?” She points to recent Edelman survey on trust in health, which found that“friends and family are more trusted than scientists and health experts for health information, and 53% of respondents express distrust in institutions addressing their health needs, and a majority believe societal leaders mislead the public on health matters.”

One dimension of the pandemic that requires closer examination, according to O'Malley, s that“it brought the government into people's lives in a really palpable way, in a way that people saw as government overreach, government telling them what to do, saying that the value of ensuring that we keep people healthy, that we preserve human life, outweighs that of keeping your business open, of sending your kids to school, of doing any of the things you couldn't do In the context of Covid.”

And while a lack of trust in institutions is almost universal,“what's so unique about our field of health and science is that having good health, making good decisions is economically smart for families. It's economically smart for the nation and our productivity.”

The Search for Answers

Says Pudloski:“We need to be looking at ways that we can help to raise awareness of sources that are trusted, raise awareness of authorities that can allow people to make decisions with appropriate information, and that's an important responsibility that we have as communicators.”

O'Malley's Coalition for Trust in Health & Science was formed in 2023 by a variety of healthcare stakeholders“who figured, we need to do better. We need to work together, not just to rebuild trust, but to be trustworthy. And so, with the backing of almost 100 national organizations, we were able to bring together the entirety of the healthcare ecosystem.”

The organization's approach has evolved over time, she says.“When we were formed, we really thought that we would have the backing of 100 national, credible organizations, and that we would be the arbiter of all things truth and trust. We would be out there combating disinformation and people would trust us.

“It doesn't work that way at all, especially today, and so where we have focused our efforts in recent years is first, we recognize that this is a long game. And second, we are best behind the scenes, working with professionals who understand how you engage skeptical individuals who have already been absorbing or buying into misinformation, how you stay on top of trends related to misinformation?”

In terms of communications,“How do you communicate with empathy? That is a building block of being trustworthy.”

On the Need to Use All Available Channels

O'Malley has also heard from coalition members who have abandoned X, the source of so much health misinformation, and moved on to BlueSky, which has become a strong source of accurate and credible information on a range of health and science issues. But she says such moves mean that expert information may not be reaching a wide audience, leaving the field open to mis- and disinformation.

Mesara, meanwhile, emphasizes the importance of other non-traditional channels to meet patients and caregivers where they are.“In the past, I could have talked about a mass communications campaign. You would have your spokesperson, you would get some real nice top tier coverage, and you would have some cool campaign, and you'd be happy because you were getting impressions.”

“It's incredibly important to understand where the people who are trying to reach are going to get their information. For example, my 85-year-old mother, who has a number of issues, she goes to Instagram. My 19-year-old daughter, she gets all her information from Tiktok. So even in my own tiny little ecosystem of family, I can see how we're being inundated by different sources of information

“Part of it is influencers. It's really important to engage influencers. It's really important to educate influencers that matter to a Gen Z, because that's where they go first. Or it's really important to be on podcast. It's a model we haven't always used traditionally in healthcare, but content in pockets is doing really well.”

Combating Disinformation Requires a Long View

At the same time,“we've been doing education to help American people understand why making evidence-based health decisions is so critical. And so a lot of our work has been focused on what you call media literacy, science literacy, data literacy, but with a focus on mis- or disinformation, not by playing whack-a-mole with misinformation as it pops up, but helping people understand what happens when they interact with misinformation, giving them tools to recognize when someone has no idea what they're talking about

One is that misinformation is designed to elicit an emotonal response.“So if you hear something, read something, and you get angry, you get curious, you laugh, you get furious, or fearful, that is a sign you need to go back in and do some more research on this topic.”

With that focus on the long game,“I can't tell you how many people come to me on a daily basis and say, we have a public health crisis. What do you think about getting this former government official or this very well-known virologist on CNN tonight? It's not going to do anything.”

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