Confusion and Distrust: New Digital Challenges for Public Health Communicators
Communications professionals in the federal health community have two new mighty opponents: Confusion and Distrust.
More than half (56 percent) of Americans do not trust the federal government, according to a 2022 survey by Partnership for Public Service. Trust in scientists is even lower. Only 29 percent of U.S. adults say they have a great deal of confidence in medical scientists to act in the public's best interest, according to new findings from Pew Research Center.
“Americans’ confidence in groups and institutions turned downward compared with just a year ago,” according to Pew researchers. “Trust in scientists and medical scientists, once seemingly buoyed by their central role in addressing the coronavirus outbreak, is now below pre-pandemic levels.”
Cut Through the Noise of Misinformation
Much of the confusion and distrust is the result of misinformation shared throughout today’s digital channels.
“Misinformation is not just hurtful – it’s lethal,” said Dr. Eduardo Sanchez, Chief Medical Officer at the American Heart Association, speaking at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting & Expo in 2021. Digital misinformation shifts focus away from informed research and care. The medical and public health community is being put to test like never before.
In addition to a COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) believes that the world is experiencing an infodemic. “An infodemic is too much information, including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak. It causes confusion and risk-taking behaviors that can harm health.”
To inoculate against an infodemic, the WHO advises management approaches that include listening to community concerns and questions, promoting understanding of risk and health expert advice, building resilience to misinformation, and engaging and empowering communities to take positive action. The Partnership for Public Service offers advice such as holding town meetings to better understand the citizens served, working together with communities to solve problems, and keeping the public informed about federal agency benefits.
Thwart Confusion and Distrust
First, we must build resilience against confusion and distrust. This takes perseverance and hard work. Here are some suggestions:
Create multiple campaigns with catchy headlines and clear, bite-sized copy that’s easy to understand without government jargon.
Be creative. UnitedHealthcare’s award-winning We Dare You campaign got its following engaged with dares, quizzes, and prizes.
Cite and work with sources other than your own agency or organization – especially those that are credible to targeted communities.
Proactively monitor social media platforms for misinformation; point out fake accounts and fake news.
Make it a mission to have a digital response team in place. They need to be able to respond – in real-time – to online blogs, mentions, and user comments.
Tell or produce meaningful stories of people in target communities who have benefited from proven public health advice, preventions, and cures.
Be prominent in the same digital channels as your target communities (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, streaming services, for example) and use the mediums those target communities are most likely to engage with (video, podcasts, infographics, gaming, for example).
Understand that your online reputation is always on the line. Be sure to fact-check all content and data sources before publishing material.
Listen, Understand, Collect Data, and Building Communities
According to the Partnership for Public Service, lack of understanding is a major source of distrust. Disparities in community service, negative personal experiences, and general distrust in government are also major factors. Communicators must do more to listen, collect community data, and work within communities to better understand what influences them and the causes of confusion and distrust.
No two communities are the same. Each has different influencers, experiences, and perceptions that must be understood. The Partnership for Public Service finds that much distrust comes from disparities in community service, negative personal experiences, and general beliefs that the government is inefficient and ineffective. Mass messaging is no longer enough. Messaging must be tailored to connect with the root causes of specific community concerns. Otherwise, perceptions will trump facts.
This was a major lesson from COVID-19, writes Janet Balis in Harvard Business Review. “Beyond geography, we have learned marketing messages need to be personally relevant, aligned to an individual’s situation and values, as opposed to demographics, such as age and gender,” Balis says. Consumer segments must be able to describe people by multiple dimensions — “from their psychographics to attitudinal characteristics.”
The challenge, however, is that data continues to lag compared to the abundance of advertising and marketing technologies, Balis says. “For your technology architecture to drive results, it must therefore be matched with sufficient scale in data to fuel its success, the right use of cases to drive results, and the right approach to human enablement.”
Otherwise, she concludes, it’s like, “having a Ferrari that you can only drive 40 miles per hour.”
Building Meaningful Partnerships.
In addition to community-based approaches, the establishment of broad partnerships can also go a long way to reinforce a unified messaging campaign and combat misinformation.
In her blog: Three Ways to Restore Public Trust in Health Information, Emilie Scantlebury, Director of Corporate Portfolio Development at Highlight, believes the solution is for “a unified effort from the entire public health community to come together to build expanded digital communications tools and consistent messaging campaigns.”
While not directly a public health response, GoDaddy did this when it heard that its small business companies needed help to stay open during the pandemic. GoDaddy launched its #OpenWeStand campaign, which brought more than 70 corporate partners together to create resources to help small businesses.
On the health care front, YouTube and the American College of Physicians (ACP) has launched a partnership to promote the benefits of vaccines and to counter COVID-19 misinformation. The campaign includes two video series, Ask Your Internist, featuring physicians with answers to vaccine-related questions, and Physician to Physician Conversations, providing physicians with practical strategies to address patients who come to them with misinformation. In the United Kingdom, WHO partnered with the UK government to create the Stop the Spread awareness campaign to identify the risks of incorrect and false information.
Shifting public perception from confusion to clarity and from distrust to trust will not be easy. But it can be done through strong communications practices, insistence on community data, and creating meaningful partnerships that resonate with specific communities.
Barry Lawrence is a Communications Program Manager at Highlight