Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, communication of public health information has been paramount to keeping individuals and their communities healthy and safe. Unfortunately, the amount of misleading information circulating is making it difficult to convey such critical information, resulting in the World Health Organization (1) classifying the current situation as an “infodemic.” Moreover, misinformation and disinformation are estimated to have cost between $50 and $300 million worth of harm per day since May 2021 (2). Accordingly, the U.S. Surgeon General (3) has called upon all Americans, including educators, researchers, and universities, to help slow the spread of health misinformation and build a healthy information environment. As physiology graduate students and faculty committed to improving health, we call upon our discipline to respond to this action call. Here we share examples of how we and other groups have provided reliable COVID-19 information to the campus and broader community.
To deliver health information during the pandemic, we developed a bimonthly infographic and created a COVID-19 resource page on our department website. For example, the infographic summarized COVID-19 trends, provided tips for locating credible information, highlighted COVID-19 peer-reviewed articles, and promoted strategies for engaging in healthy living behaviors. The infographic content was derived from credible sources, reviewed by an epidemiologist, and distributed via email to students and faculty in our department. We have also helped to keep our rural and medically underserved community informed during the pandemic by delivering a monthly virtual public town hall series, where a speaker panel that included public health officials, clinicians, and educators, along with select graduate student experts, discussed a COVID-19 topic and answered questions from the community. To date, over 20 town halls that have included more than 100 different speakers have been delivered. Similar to our efforts, a multidisciplinary group of graduate students and faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (4) addressed COVID-19 concerns by facilitating conversations between community members and scientists to make science more approachable, palatable, and valued. Collectively, these examples demonstrate how graduate students and faculty can serve as local trusted experts “next door” to help interpret health information coming from more distant state, federal, and world health organizations.
Importantly, there are several key lessons we have learned from communicating COVID-19 information in real-time to our campus and community. First, developing effective resources requires creativity, organization, and teamwork. Second, presenting information critical to the health and safety of individuals and their communities requires confidence, accuracy, and empathy. Third, information from peer-reviewed sources must be summarized without excessive use of scientific jargon. Finally, stepping outside our direct area of expertise has been challenging; however, it has improved our ability to work together, solve problems, and communicate science to the lay audience. Now more than ever is the time for physiology graduate students, educators, and researchers to leverage our professional skills and knowledge to promote public health. Building a healthier information environment today will impact society tomorrow.
GRANTS
S.J.E. and K.B.K. are supported by Michigan Health Endowment Fund. I.M.L. is supported by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation of Michigan.
DISCLOSURES
No conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, are declared by the authors.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
A.L.H., X.C., I.M.L., C.J.S., I.J.W., J.J.P., K.B.K., and S.J.E. conceived and designed research; A.L.H., X.C., I.M.L., C.J.S., I.J.W., and S.J.E. drafted manuscript; A.L.H., X.C., I.M.L., C.J.S., I.J.W., K.B.K., and S.J.E. edited and revised manuscript; A.L.H., X.C., I.M.L., C.J.S., I.J.W., J.J.P., K.B.K., and S.J.E. approved final version of manuscript.
REFERENCES
- 1.WHO, UN, UNICEF, UNDP, UNESCO, UNAIDS, ITU, UN Global Pulse, IFRC. Managing the COVID-19 infodemic: promoting healthy behaviours and mitigating the harm from misinformation and disinformation (Online). Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization. https://www.who. int/news/item/23-09-2020-managing-the-covid-19-infodemic-promoting-healthy-behaviours-andmitigating-the-harm-from-misinformation-and-disinformation [2021 Nov 10]. [Google Scholar]
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