Name: Fighting vaccine misinformation online
Uploaded: 2020-10-13
Duration: 5 min 52 s
Description: The Clinton Foundation's Chelsea Clinton, The Vaccine Alliance's Anuradha Gupta, and Voices for Vaccine's Karen Ernst discuss the massive amounts of vaccine misinformation available online.

 CHELSEA CLINTON: Anuradha I want to return to you and just hope that you can talk a little bit about what Gavi is doing to combat misinformation around vaccines, around kind of vaccines broadly as a public health intervention, and also kind of specifically kind of what you've seen to work in different countries to really kind of build confidence and demand for vaccinations. ANURADHA GUPTA: Excellent question, Chelsea. And really our view is that the best antidote to misinformation is good information. So of course, on the one hand, we are working with Facebook and other social media platforms to really make sure that the users are referring increasingly to [? qualitative ?] sources of information on vaccines, such as the CDC and WHO, and that they really sort of restrict the distribution of misleading content on vaccines. And just now I heard Facebook's announcement saying that they would ban advertisements that discourage people from coming forward for COVID-19 vaccines. But a very important part of our strategy really is to enhance awareness at the community level by using channels that communities trust and their health providers that they rely on typically, their religious leaders, faith based organizations, and the civil society. And as a part of our structure systematic work, we equip these health providers and different champions and ambassadors and opinion leaders with very good information and interpersonal tools so that they can spot rumors, they can respond to questions that the communities may have, and we actually spot demand, which is a [? state ?] for vaccination. Another important aspect of our work is to really strengthen health systems so that the quality of service experience for caregivers is enhanced and bolstered. Because if mothers and other caregivers bring their children for vaccination and they feel welcomed, then we know that they'll come back with the children for the rest of the vaccines. CHELSEA CLINTON: And Karen, a somewhat similar question to you, because I know so much of your work really is in talking to parents and caregivers. Could you just share what you found to be effective sometimes on Facebook and social media platforms and sometimes kind of in real life? Because we know that parents and caregivers want the best for our children. And so how do you kind of start with recognizing that and then start or continue, really, with what Anuradha said by giving actually good information as an antidote to whatever kind of mis and malinformation they may have otherwise received and been influenced by? KAREN: That's a really great question. And I really feel like some of what stops parents from engaging with other parents about vaccine misinformation or disinformation is that they feel as though they need to have some sort of expertise in it. But we really try to emphasize that they do not need to be the experts in vaccination to know when something is incorrect and that it doesn't come from an expert source and that they can merely point that out. Just saying to someone, I really trust my doctor, and that is not what she recommends for our family. Or I heard Dr. Fauci say this on TV, and it doesn't align with what you're saying right now. But there's also another part where people really want to change someone else's mind, because you want your loved ones protected. You want the children of your friends protected. And so it's really important at that point to be a good listener as well as a good talker, to listen, to find out what it is that is behind the person's hesitancy about vaccines or why they're listening to a particular kind of misinformation about, say, masks or other COVID related items, and to really work with that person with a kind of empathy and to emphasize your shared values with that person around protecting your family, protecting your friends, that you are engaging that person because you love them and you care about them and you want the best for them. And that is a very slow way of going about changing a person's mind or engaging misinformation, but it's also very important because the moment that you just try to prove them wrong or you try to look smarter than they are, then the conversation is over forever and you have someone who is very much more dug in. And so those are really some of the skills that we teach parents is that you can give a simple statement like, that doesn't sound right, or, I'm pretty sure that's not what most doctors recommend. And you can also be a listener and take in what they're saying and have some empathy for them and then deliver some good information or point them to good sources to find more information. 

Fighting vaccine misinformation online

Chelsea Clinton, Anuradha Gupta, and Karen Ernst 

Uncategorized

The Clinton Foundation's Chelsea Clinton, The Vaccine Alliance's Anuradha Gupta, and Voices for Vaccine's Karen Ernst discuss the massive amounts of vaccine misinformation available online.