Infodemic Management Masterclass

Recording, Slides & Resources now available

Global Public Health Week 2024 Events

As part of the discussion surrounding best practice in public health for Global Public Health Week, CAPHIA presented two interactive sessions featuring expert global academics and practitioners.

Event Overview
Presenters
Recording & Resources

The infodemic has been defined by WHO as ‘the overwhelming amount of information, accurate and otherwise that accompanies an acute health event’. The infodemic can make it difficult for people to find accurate health information from reliable sources to make informed decisions about their health. While the infodemic concerns the health information seeking, access and use during health emergencies such as COVID-19, this challenge is the outgrowth of the modern information ecosystem that increasingly impacts other health programmes and the health system, as well as society at large.

The information environment is the cumulation of individual, community, organisational and systems approaches to health information production, exchange, translation and use. People express themselves, share information and signal their questions, concerns and trust in health information through a range of online and offline interactions, that are influenced by a range of factors.

When overlaid with public health, the information ecosystem dynamics challenges how people search for, access, interact with, feel about and act on health information, therefore contributing to health behaviors.

Building resilience to health misinformation and skills to navigate the information environment to find accurate and credible health information is important but complex. Similar to other health issues, factors such as the social and commercial determinants of health, supportive environments, trust in government, health system, health services and each other, interpersonal and intergenerational health information seeking and use, and personal skills all impact on an individual’s ability to search for, access, process and act on health information.

This session will:

introduce the key concepts of a healthy information environment,
how it challenges the health system in routine and through infodemics in health emergencies, and
describe the lessons learned in the field of infodemiology during the pandemic.

The speakers will encourage active participation to share experiences. The presenters bring global and national experience and look forward to the conversation.

This masterclass will give attendees the opportunity to ask questions. The event will be available for viewing after the session on Vimeo along with some take-home messages.

Dr Becky White
Adjunct Research Fellow, Curtin University

Becky is a digital health, infodemic management and health promotion consultant and researcher. She has over 15 years experience working across a diverse range of projects in academia, government and NGOs, both in Australia and globally. She has worked for many years on how digital health technologies can be best utilised for health promotion and health behaviour change in populations. Since 2020 she has been involved in infodemic management work including producing and teaching infodemic insights monitoring and analysis, both as part of the COVID-19 response and in a research capacity, looking at information trends over the course of the pandemic and the intersection of health promotion and healthy information environments. Becky’s research interests and expertise is with digital and health literacy, infodemics, health promotion and digital health. She is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Curtin University, a Director at Reach Health Promotion Innovations and is an IUHPE accredited Health Promotion Practitioner.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-becky-white

Website: Reach HPI (rhpi.com.au)

Tina D Purnat
Visiting Scholar, University of Memphis School of Public Health

A passionate digital health and health information aficionado, I am driven by the mission to collaborate and construct robust public health systems. My ultimate goal? Empowering informed decisions for health and well-being. My academic foundation is rooted in economics and biomedical informatics, and I flourish when immersed in interdisciplinary, human-centric public health endeavors. Over 20 years experience from academia, European Center for Prevention and Control, and the World Health Organization. Proud to be Dean’s Visiting Scholar at University of Memphis School of Public Health and a Fellow of the Australasian Institute for Digital Health, I also uphold a PMP certification alongside various non-degree pursuits.

LinkedIn blog: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tinadpurnat/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ti-q-R4AAAAJ&hl=en
tinapurnat.com