The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged health systems and societies across the world on an unprecedented scale. The pandemic has been accompanied by an infodemic. Rapid amplification and dissemination of information and misinformation online, in a time when people are more socially distanced than ever before and relying on their phones to connect to the world, is adding a new concerning dimension to the infodemic. If people act on false health information they hear or see (online and offline), it can impact their health, and if enough people do not follow health guidance, this can elongate this pandemic. Until a vaccine or vaccines are widely available to the public and widely accepted by the public, we continue to be at risk of both the infodemic and the pandemic. Moreover, health systems will likely need to respond to future concurrent infodemics, which will impact delivery of health services and programme implementation.
Health authorities and governments have during 2020 responded to the infodemic based on their local needs, capacities and context. It is key to capture the ways countries and parts of their health system have responded to the infodemic and related policies and interventions. Contributions of experience are key to discuss approaches to infodemic response going forward.
Poster submissions are invited from professionals working in infodemic response, as contributions to the WHO whole-of-society conference, November–December 2020.
- More than one unit from the same country can respond and submit a video poster.
- Some posters will be invited to submit a video recording of the poster for the conference.
- Deadline for submission: Thursday, 26 November 2020 21:00 Geneva, Switzerland time
- Submit a filled out 5-slide template to infodemicmanagement@who.int
- More detailed reference to help fill out the template is available here.
The country posters aim to learn:
- what governments and health authorities have done to manage rumors, misinformation, and harmful impact of infodemic on health of communities and individuals;
- what kinds of tools and approaches have countries used to design interventions with real-time monitoring and feedback on the state and impact of the infodemic on people’s motivations, decisions to pursue self-protective or healthy behaviors, as well as reasons they do not;
- what countries needed to adapt in existing routine and emergency response;
- how this was done;
- what kinds of skillsets are used to support infodemic response, and
- where in the health system and government infodemic response efforts are located, and what linkages exists between them.
Who should submit a poster:
Submissions are invited from professionals working in units who work in policy analysis and response to the infodemic and health mis/disinformation, located both in health authorities (for example, Ministry of Health, COVID-19 response task force, Institute
of Public Health, Institute of Health Research) or in other parts of government (for example, Prime Minister’s office, inter-sectoral task force to respond to disinformation, directorate for information society or ICT, ministry of interior,
ministry of information, disaster response agency).