To Fix Health Misinformation, Think Beyond Fact Checking
When tackling the problem of misinformation, people often think first of content and its accuracy. But contering misinformation by fact-checking every erroneous or misleading claim traps organizations in an endless game of whack-a-mole. A more effective approach may be to start by considering connections and communities. That is particularly important for public health, where different people are vulnerable in different ways.
On this episode, Issues editor Monya Baker talks with global health professionals Tina Purnat and Elisabeth Wilhelm about how public health workers, civil society organizations, and others can understand and meet communities’ information needs. Purnat led the World Health Organization’s team that strategized responses to misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic. She is also a coeditor of the book Managing Infodemics in the 21st Century. Wilhelm has worked in health communications at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, and USAID.
Resources
- Visit Tina Purnat and Elisabeth Wilhelm’s websites to learn more about their work and find health misinformation resources.
- Check out Community Stories Guide to explore how public health professionals can use stories to understand communities’ information needs and combat misinformation.
- How is an infodemic manager like a unicorn? Visit the WHO Infodemic Manager Training website to find training resources created by Purnat and Wilhelm, and learn about the skills needed to become an infodemiologist.
Transcript
Monya Baker: Welcome to the Ongoing Transformation, a podcast from Issues in Science and Technology. Issues is a quarterly journal published by the National Academy of Sciences and by Arizona State University.
How many of these have you heard? “Put on a jacket or you’ll catch a cold.” “Don’t crack your joints or you’ll get arthritis.” “Reading in low light will ruin your eyes.” Health misinformation has long been a problem, but the rise of social media and the COVID-19 pandemic has escalated the speed and scale at which misinformation can spread and the harm that it can do. Countering this through fact-checking feels like an endless game of whack-a-mole. As soon as one thing gets debunked, five more appear. Is there a better way to defuse misinformation?
My name is Monya Baker, senior editor at Issues. On this episode, I’m joined by global health professionals, Tina Purnat and Elisabeth Wilhelm. We’ll discuss how to counter misinformation by building trust and by working with communities to understand their information needs and then deliver an effective response. Tina Purnat led the team at the World Health Organization that strategized responses to misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic. And Elisabeth Wilhelm has worked in health communications at the US Centers for Disease Control, UNICEF and USAID. Tina, Lis, welcome!
Tina Purnat: Hi.
Elisabeth Wilhelm: Thanks.
Baker: Could each of you tell me what you were doing during the pandemic and what did you see in terms of misinformation?
Wilhelm: So, during the pandemic, I was working at CDC and Tina was working at WHO. We’re going to talk a little bit about our experiences, but those don’t represent our former employers or our current ones. They’re just from our own personal experiences and our own personal war stories.
So, early on, I was sent as a responder to Indonesia to support the COVID-19 response in February of 2020. And at the time, there was officially no cases in Indonesia, but several colleagues in several different agencies were quite worried about this. And so, they asked for support. I saw huge challenges regarding COVID there specifically about misinformation, lack of information, too much information. And all of this really affected the government’s ability to respond and build trust with a really anxious public because so little information was available.
Information overload that was causing this anxiety and panic. And that was paralyzing not just for the public, but for the government and public health institutions that were trying to respond to it.
And at the end of March, I had already ended up in quarantine and I was sent to my hotel because I was in a meeting with too many high level officials in a very poorly ventilated room. And at the time, I reconnected with Tina because she had decided to set up a mass consultation from her dining room table through WHO to really understand and unpack this new phenomenon and misinformation. At the time, it was calling it the infodemic, and it was that information overload that was causing this anxiety and panic. And that was paralyzing not just for the public, but for the government and public health institutions that were trying to respond to it.
Purnat: I mean, we both saw writing on the wall, how big of a problem this was going to become globally. So, in February 2020, I was actually pulled from my day job at WHO. I was working in artificial intelligence and digital health, and I was pulled into the search support to the WHO emergency response team. And initially, the focus of my work was on how to quickly and effectively understand the different concerns and questions and narratives people were sharing online about COVID more broadly. It looked really at how the digitized, chaotic information environment is impacting people’s health.
So, I collaborated with Lis and many, many other people from practically all over the world, both on the science of infodemiology and building new public health tools, training more people, and also building collaborative networks. That later became known as infodemic management in health emergencies.
Baker: Just to sum up, Lis was in Indonesia before any cases of COVID had been reported publicly. And you, Tina, were called to manage a lot of things from your kitchen table as WHO tried to ramp up a response. What surprised both of you in terms of misinformation?
Wilhelm: Well, I could say that in Indonesia, it was really clear that everyone was caught flatfooted. But this was, of course, I think the story all over the world of how fast misinformation grew and spread and where people’s questions concerns were not getting answered and then trying to understand who felt like they were responsible for trying to address this misinformation or who was in a position to do something about it.
There’s really no vaccine against misinformation, although people would like there to be. There isn’t one simple answer.
I learned it’s not just government policymakers who play a role in addressing this problem, but it’s also journalists. It’s working with community-based organizations. It’s working with doctors, with nurses, with other health workers and with digital tech experts. And actually, it’s a lot of the lessons that we learned in Indonesia I would bring back to the US to apply in the US context. And there’s a lot of global lessons learned on addressing this information that we were able to bring back home.
And it’s just part of, I think, the largest story that misinformation is a complex phenomenon. The information environment is increasingly complex. No country is not affected by it. And health systems are just starting to understand and wrestle how to deal with it and recognizing that there isn’t one silver bullet. There’s really no vaccine against misinformation, although people would like there to be. There isn’t one simple answer. And I think that became increasingly clear during the pandemic.
And a lot of it has to do with trust. You have to build trust and do that in the middle of a pandemic. And it’s really hard to do that when you’re trying to address misinformation where people have laid their trust in others and not necessarily those that are in front of a bank of cameras and are an official spokesperson speaking to the public every day during a press conference. And so, that to me was a big revelation.
Baker: And Tina, I think I heard this phrase from you first, that instead of taking this very content-focused approach to misinformation, that a more effective way would be a public health approach to information. What does that mean?
If they find the information, the right information at the right time from the right person, then there’s much less opportunity or a chance that they would actually turn to a less credible source. So, we need to really be thinking much further upstream in this evolution of, well, what does actually create rumors and misinformation.
Purnat: One of the principles in public health, for example, is doing no harm. Another principle is really focusing on prevention instead of only mitigation or just treating disease, but actually preventing it. And I think actually what we’ve learned really most during the pandemic is the need to really understand how the information environment works, how misinformation actually takes hold, how it spreads, and what actually drives the creation and spread of it.
So, if you want to be really proactive, really what we’ve learned is that you need to be paying attention to what are actually people’s questions and concerns, or what is the health information that they cannot find because that basically are the needs that they’re trying to address. If we meet them, if they find the information, the right information at the right time from the right person, then there’s much less opportunity or a chance that they would actually turn to a less credible source. So, we need to really be thinking much further upstream in this evolution of, well, what does actually create rumors and misinformation. And not only basically play whack-a-mole chasing different posts.
Baker: How do you go about figuring out what a community’s information needs are?
Wilhelm: Ask them. Just don’t assume that a survey is really going to fully encapsulate what people’s information needs are. The best way is to ask them directly. And there are ways of engaging with communities, understanding their needs, and then deciding better health services to meet those needs. And that really is a community-centered approach that I hope becomes far more normed than it has been. It’s the whole idea of not for us without us.
And so, recognizing that blasting messages at communities that we think are going to be important or relevant to their context and that they’re more likely to follow, that’s the way of doing public health from 50 years ago. And we got to change how we understand and work with communities and involve them in the entire process in the business of getting people healthy.
Blasting messages at communities that we think are going to be important or relevant to their context and that they’re more likely to follow, that’s the way of doing public health from 50 years ago. And we got to change how we understand and work with communities and involve them in the entire process.
Public health is about the fact that your individual decisions can have population level impacts. I like to think of it in this way that everybody should wash their hands after they use the bathroom, but there are policies that also encourage that in places where people eat food. When you go to a restaurant and you go to the bathroom, there’s a big sign on the side of the door that says, “Employees must wash their hands.” So, while there might be also social norms and healthcare providers recommending that people wash their hands after using the bathroom, there also are policies and regulations in place that encourage that and enforce that so that everybody stays healthy and you can get a burger without getting food poisoning.
One of the projects I worked on at Brown really tried to understand people’s experiences on a health topic through stories. We tell each other’s stories. We understand the world through stories. Stories are incredibly motivating and powerful, and they’re usually emotionally based. They’re not fact-based necessarily. My story is my experience. But if I share it with you, you might be convinced of a certain thing because I’ve had this experience. If you can look at stories like that in aggregate, you can start identifying, well, are there common experiences that people in this community have and what can that tell us about how they’re being bombarded by the information environment or the common kinds of misinformation they’re seeing or the concerns they have? Or what are some of the social norms here that might be helpful or harmful for people protecting their health? And what can we do to better design services to meet people’s needs? It’s not just understanding how people are affected by misinformation, but it’s the totality of the information environment and when they want to do the healthy thing, is it easy to do?
Misinformation is often spread by people successfully when their values align with what they’re saying.
Purnat: Misinformation is often spread by people successfully when their values align with what they’re saying, that narrative. So, if a person values autonomy and their own control over their health, then they’re much more likely to discuss and share misinformation or health information that is underpinned by protecting people’s freedoms and rights. Or if people have historically had bad experiences with their physicians or their health service, then they might discuss and share health information and misinformation that offers alternative treatments or remedies that don’t require a visit to the doctor’s office.
That’s literally where you could say vulnerabilities also come in. And this is where the challenge of addressing health misinformation is because it requires solutions that go beyond only communicating, but actually you need to understand and address the underlying reasons and context and situations that people are in that leads to them sharing or believing in specific health information narratives.
So, in public health, we’re often organized in a particular disease, specific health topic, et cetera, but that’s not how people actually experience that day-to-day or their communities don’t experience it in day-to-day. So, when we plan on meeting their information and service needs, we have to look at the big picture and then work with all the relevant services and organizations that may meet the community where they’re at.
Baker: I wonder if you could have examples of situations where a community’s information needs were met well and situations where community needs were not met well?
Purnat: What’s happening right now in the US, it’s the H5N1 bird flu outbreak in cows. Just yesterday, I did a short search on what people are searching for on Google related to the bird flu. And there’s plenty of questions that people have from their day-to-day life that are not being answered yet by any big credible source of health information. Like the first questions people have when Googling it is about the symptoms of the H5N1 infection. But then the next concern is how is this affecting their pets? And then there’s various questions about food safety related to consuming milk and eggs and beef, and also questions in relation to the risk of infection to farmers also via handling animal manure.
And these are all information voids that the Googling public and affected workers have, but it’s likely just the tip of the iceberg. And the challenging part here is that it’s not only the public that isn’t getting the information, it’s also the public health and other trusted messengers don’t know what’s going on either. They’re complaining about slow and incomplete access to data and lack of communication from animal and public health agencies. So, this is a very common situation in outbreaks. And, I don’t know, Lis, can you think of any examples of successful?
Wilhelm: I really struggled to think of examples. And I don’t think there’s a single health topic where absolutely everyone’s information needs were met because if that were true, then we would have 100% coverage of all the things your healthcare provider recommends for you. I mean, I think the example I gave of there’s 30,000 books on pregnancy and childbirth on Amazon yet more keep getting published points to the fact that despite the thought that in the year 2024 you think every single question that could be asked about pregnancy and childbirth has probably been asked, apparently there’s still demand for more information. And that’s just books.
I don’t think there’s a single health topic where absolutely everyone’s information needs were met because if that were true, then we would have 100% coverage of all the things your healthcare provider recommends for you.
I mean, the most trusted sources of information on health, regardless of the topic, is almost always going to be your healthcare provider. And so, it’s that relationship that people have with their healthcare providers that’s also really critically important, if you’re lucky enough to have a primary healthcare provider.
I think the other side of the coin here is what are we doing to ensure that doctors and nurses and midwives and all kinds of health professionals, pharmacists, which are increasingly important during the pandemic because they started vaccinating people for things more than just flu vaccine. These are people who are having direct one-on-one conversations with individuals who have questions and concerns. What are we doing to ensure that they’re getting the training they need to have those effective conversations on health topics, but also recognize that their patients are having all kinds of stuff show up on their Facebook and social media feeds, and how do they address questions and concerns and misinformation that their patients are seeing on their screens, and how do we get health workers to recognize that that’s also part of their job. The information environment is starting to affect how doctors and nurses and other healthcare providers provide care.
And I don’t think even medical education is really caught up to the fact that the majority of people get their health information through a small screen. And that is also going to mediate how they understand and take that information on board, and that also might affect their health behavior. How many people do you know that you regularly see for a checkup or to discuss a medical topic that is a digital native or understands how to send out a tweet? We’re working in a space that’s increasingly digital, but sometimes the people who are in charge of our public health efforts who are in charge of our healthcare systems are not digital natives.
Baker: Yeah. Lis, you had said sometimes in public health, we are our own worst enemies. And I wonder if each of you could tell me what’s the one or two thing that you’ve seen that just frustrates you?
Purnat: There’s a long list actually.
Wilhelm: I want to take out a banjo and sing a song and tell you a story. I think the biggest challenges in public health is that science translation piece between what does the research tell us, how do we talk to the general public about it, how do we talk to patients about it and make sure that it’s understood. And sometimes things break down in that translation process.
There is a bible for people who are communicators, who do risk communication, who do crisis and emergency communication. And there are seven principles in this bible of how you’re supposed to communicate to the public. The first three are be first, be right, be credible. The problem is is that if you spend all of your efforts trying to ascertain whether or not you’re right, you might not be first. You end up being second, third, fourth, or fifth.
We’re really bad at exploring complex information. And we tend to believe the first thing we hear.
And the problem is is that we know from psychology and science that in emergencies and during outbreaks and crises, people’s brains operate differently. And the way it works differently is that we tend to seek out new sources of information. We’re really bad at exploring complex information. And we tend to believe the first thing we hear, which means if we’re not the first thing you heard, but the second, third or fourth or fifth, it’s really, really difficult to dislodge the first thing that you heard. So, that to me is shooting ourselves in the foot.
It’s really difficult to work as a communicator when you’re trying to balance a lack of evidence and science and being able to speak from a place of evidence. And when you’re trying to talk to an anxious public that has questions that we don’t have great answers to yet. And that is a problem that we’re experiencing every single time that there’s a new outbreak or a new disease or a new health threat, where we are racing against time to catch up.
Unfortunately, the internet will always move faster than that. And those questions and concerns will mushroom and turn into misinformation extremely quickly before someone with credibility could step in front of those cameras and deliver those remarks at a press conference. And at the end of the day, who actually listens to that press conference and who believes what is said by that spokesperson?
Purnat: I mean, just to build on what Lis said, one thing that we’re not yet I think appreciating is that this swirl of information and the conversations and reactions impacts our ability to promote public health. Literally, it cuts across individual people communities, but also it impacts health system and even health workers themselves, and we’re not really fully appreciating while this is a systemic challenge.
So, think about the teen vaping epidemic that basically seems to have caught everyone by surprise. It’s been propagated by very, very effective lifestyle-based social marketing campaigns and attractive design of the vapes that specifically spoke to teens. And while we were working to understand the epidemiological picture and we’re really putting in an effort of getting reliable evidence around it to understand the teen vaping problem, while the marketing that was targeting the teens continued to for many years and be unaddressed.
Baker: One thing I have heard is that too often when planning a response, people focus on this—I think it’s Liz who called them magic messages. Tell me about that and why it’s not going to be the most effective thing.
Wilhelm: So, maybe to put it this way, when was the last time that you had a conflict or disagreement with someone and you were searching for the right words and you found the right words and you said your magic words and it solved the problem immediately? This doesn’t happen in real life. If messages were in fact magical and if you just had to find them and identify them, the entire marketing industry will be out of a job and everyone would follow their healthcare provider’s advice on getting adequate exercise and protein in their diets, right?
If you want to understand what a person’s thinking or feeling, ask them. Just don’t make assumptions because that’s how poorly designed messages are developed and those can be actually harmful.
That’s just not how humans work. We’re not empty brains walking around waiting for messages to be filled in our brains that we then follow. We come with our own basket case of experiences, of biases, of our own literacies or lack thereof, our own perspectives on the world, our culture, our religious beliefs, our values. Those all color how we interact with the world and how we seek and get health services.
And so, there’s no magic messages that’s going to cut through that. People are different. Every community is different, and we have to recognize that in that diversity, trying to identify what people’s information needs are is going to look very different from place to place and from topic to topic, which goes back to if you want to understand what a person’s thinking or feeling, ask them. Just don’t make assumptions because that’s how poorly designed messages are developed and those can be actually harmful.
Purnat: And actually, this links also to how the media environment in general that we live in has changed. The days when people sat around the living room and listened to the nightly newscast, that’s like from a hundred years ago. Nowadays, we don’t receive information on health or other topics from single one source that we trust. We’re more like information omnivores. We consume information from different sources online and offline. We trust some more than others. So, when you attempt to blast out health messages into the world like a radio signal, and then you’re hoping that people are tuning in, that’s destined to fail.
When you attempt to blast out health messages into the world like a radio signal, and then you’re hoping that people are tuning in, that’s destined to fail.
But the problem there is that there’s also not anymore, one organization or person that has monopoly on speaking about credible health information. And that challenges how we need to be dealing with or interacting with information environments. We wouldn’t recommend that you hire a beauty influencer to talk about vaccine safety. And that’s just because they may be credible to their audience because of their beauty know-how, but probably won’t really move the needle in terms of public health outcomes. But we could work with beauty influencers probably about things that relate to social media because they’re experts in that.
Baker: So, not just the message, also the messengers?
Wilhelm: It’s the medium. It’s the message. It’s the messengers. It’s everything. I mean, think about it. For example, when you get alert on your phone saying that a tornado watch has just become a tornado warning and that you should go seek shelter or shelter in place, you’re getting the right information at the right time at the right place because geographically, the phone knows where you’re located and it overlaps where there’s this event that’s occurring. But also when we think about magic messages and we think about trust, we assume that people trust the messenger. What if people don’t trust the Weather Channel or the National Weather Service that provides those alerts to their phone?
And if we kind of extrapolate that to other areas of health, people’s trust in their doctor and the CDC and the National Pediatric Association might all be very different. We know that these are credible sources of information, but if these are not trusted, people will seek information from other alternative sources that better align with their values and their information needs. And that’s the real issue.
It’s not about we need to improve trust in these big institutions. It’s just recognizing people of varying levels of trust with different groups of people, different voices, different messengers, different on and on, different platforms, and recognizing that people get information and work with trusted information from different spaces.
Baker: And Tina, you’ve been thinking about how it’s not just information that needs to be supplied, that it’s not just messages that need to be supplied. It’s important to also know how the services will be delivered or make sure that services are being delivered.
Purnat: In ways that actually meet the needs, yes. So, example, during the pandemic, when the vaccine rollout started happening, many different countries used digital portals, digital tools that people could use to schedule their vaccine shot. But some communities either didn’t have internet access, didn’t have devices they could use to schedule an appointment, or they were just too far from locations that were providing the vaccine. That meant that actually, even though on paper the arrangement and the logistics sounded really well thought out, well, some people missed out because they weren’t able to actually take advantage of what the health system was asking them to do and offering.
Baker: Right. So, the message was delivered, but the services not really, not so much?
Purnat: And probably generated some frustration, which led to erosion of trust and frustration with the health authorities.
Wilhelm: A colleague of ours would say, “You want to make a health service fun, easy and accessible.” And so, just recognizing that if you want people to do something, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to do it. And so, that’s the example that Tina gave is a really great one, where there’s a mismatch.
Or early in the pandemic, you are instructing people who might have family members that may have been exposed to the COVID virus, that they should isolate at home, that they should take these precautions so they don’t transmit the virus to other family members. But how exactly is that supposed to work if you are living in a multigenerational household in a slum somewhere where you don’t have access to running water? So, the public health guidance might be very nice, but completely incomprehensible and completely unactionable by the average person that’s living in that type of community.
You don’t want to set people up to fail. If you’re talking to the general public about what they should do, you really need to be specific.
And so, we also have to recognize you don’t want to set people up to fail. If you’re talking to the general public about what they should do, you really need to be specific as to, “Well, what do I do if I have an elderly person that has accessibility issues or somebody who’s immunocompromised in my family,” or “What do I do if a family member has recovered from COVID? Are they eligible to receive the COVID vaccine?” I mean, these are common questions that people were asking, and the guidance wasn’t always really clear as to what people were supposed to do in those situations.
Baker: You said that just improving communications is not going to make everything better. So, what else could people be doing systematically?
Wilhelm: My pet peeve really is this focus to jump to solutions, which actually can do I think more damage in the long run, and that tend to be coercive in nature, content takedowns versus the more harder and necessary work of building trust and improving the breadth and depth of how healthcare workers and health systems engage with communities and with patients. There’s no magic button you can push just like there’s no magic message that increases trust. And there’s no magic button that you can push that can defeat all the underlying reasons why someone might believe misinformation instead of what you’re telling them.
Misinformation represents a failure—not of that individual or that community—but of a government and a health system that is not worthy of trust.
People who believe misinformation in communities that are acting on misinformation represents a failure—not of that individual or that community—but of a government and a health system that is not worthy of trust. If people believe misinformation instead of their healthcare provider, that tells me that something has gone horribly wrong and it isn’t on the individual.
We need to understand this, that this is a systemic public health problem. And we as public health professionals are on the hook to address these complex problems just like we’ve addressed other complex societal problems such as drunk driving or smoking cessation where it requires a lot of the levers, a lot of different levels.
Baker: I’ve really enjoyed learning more about this. I guess I’ll just ask each of you for one thing that you think could be done or that must be understood to move from sort of a less effective narrow approach to a more effective, broader approach.
Wilhelm: You know, the power of the internet is in your hands. As a consumer, as an individual, what you say and what you do and how you interact with people in your online communities and your offline communities can be extremely powerful. And so, take advantage of that power. Have conversations with family members and friends when they have questions or concerns. Point people in the direction of credible information. Engage with people. Do it so respectfully. Not everything has to be a shouting match on the internet.
And that can go a long way to creating a much healthier information environment where people feel like they can voice their questions and concerns without being shouted at down or talked over or dismissed just because they have legitimate concerns. And so, if we can bring some of that into our online and offline interactions every day, I think that would make things a little bit healthier.
We do need public health leadership that understands the critical and integral role that the digital information environment has in health.
Purnat: We do need public health leadership that understands the critical and integral role that the digital information environment has in health. And we need to be able to deal with how technology might be misdirecting people to the wrong health advice or all too often different health authorities still treat their websites like digital magazines. But in reality, they need to publish health information in ways that gets picked up and disseminated automatically online and used by people.
So, one thing that we need to recognize in public health is that this isn’t just in a domain of one or two functions or offices in a CDC or a National Institute of Public Health or a Ministry of Health or a health department. This is actually something that is challenging every role within the health system. And that means that patient-facing, community-facing roles or researchers and analysts and even policy advisors.
And that means we need to recognize that we need to invest in updating of our tools the way that we understand commercial information, social-economic determinants of health, and that needs to trickle into and be integrated both into our tools the way that we support our health workforce, as well as how it informs policy. It’s a bit tough nut to crack, but we can mobilize and use the expertise of practically every person that works in public health and beyond actually.
Wilhelm: This is a global problem. This affects every country from Afghanistan to the US to Greece to Zimbabwe. Everybody’s got the same issues trying to understand and address this complex information environment. And so, we can all learn from one another and recognize that this is a truly global new public health problem that we need to come up with better strategies to address. So, I think paying attention to this increasingly smaller planet that we live on, what happens in other countries affects what happens in ours, especially when it comes to how information is shared and amplified online.
Baker: I’d like to end by asking you about the Infodemic Manager training program that you worked on with the World Health Organization. You have called it a unicorn factory. Why do infodemic managers call themselves unicorns?
The perfect infodemic manager is someone who has public health experience that understands how the internet works, understands digital health, understands communication and social and behavioral science. They understand public health, epidemiology, outbreak response, emergency management. And there are very few humans on the planet who have all these skill sets.
Wilhelm: It’s the idea that the perfect infodemic manager is someone who has public health experience that understands how the internet works, understands digital health, understands communication and social and behavioral science. They understand public health, epidemiology, outbreak response, emergency management. And there are very few humans on the planet who have all these skill sets in one body.
And so, when we developed this training, we invited a very large group of humans from many different backgrounds to come together to learn some of these skills. And so, the joke became that the trainings were unicorn factories, where people went in with their existing and they upgraded a few new ones, and then they came out the other end with a little bit more sparkle and a little bit more ability to address health misinformation. And this took a life of its own. And these people decided to call themselves unicorns. They’re out there in the world, and you will see them with little unicorn buttons and stickers that they’ll have. And it’s kind of cool.
Purnat: And they were extremely committed and found this so valuable that we had people who were still wanting to participate while their country had massive flooding and monsoons or, for example, with family tragedy. And this was just a testament to the fact that really these challenges, people who worked in the communities, who worked in the COVID-19 response, they were recognizing that actually when they talk to each other, to people from other countries, they were actually seeing the same challenges. They were not alone experiencing this. This was not only specific to their country. And it was a big revelation to everyone that actually we can help each other a lot by talking to each other, supporting each other, and sharing what we’re experiencing and what we’re doing, and trying out to try to address these issues.
132 countries is how many people that we’ve trained from over the course of several years throughout this process. And it’s a small moment of joy in what was otherwise a very difficult, complex and horrifying outbreak response because many of the people that we’re being trained were doing this at all hours of the night, all parts of the world on crappy internet connections sitting together to try and solve this problem and learn together for four weeks when they’re off and also in their day job responding to their country’s COVID outbreak.
Wilhelm: So, you would have the Canadian nurse talking to the polio worker in Afghanistan, talking to the behavioral scientists in Australia, talking to the journalists in Argentina who all were taking the training and saying, “Let’s compare notes,” and then realizing how similar the challenges were that they were facing, but also a great way to come up with new solutions to some of those problems together.
Baker: Tina, Lis, thank you for this wonderful conversation. I hope it has inspired more people to become unicorns. Find out more about how to counter health misinformation by visiting our show notes.
Please subscribe to the Ongoing Transformation wherever you get your podcast. And thanks to our podcast producer, Kimberly Quach and our audio engineer, Shannon Lynch. My name is Monya Baker, Senior Editor at Issues in Science and Technology. Thank you for listening.