Highlights from the 2020 Digital Health Promotion Executive Leadership Summit
by John P. Allegrante, PhD, LHD (HON)
The 3rd Annual Digital Health Promotion Executive Leadership Summit came to a close after three days of presentations by some of the leading researchers, thought leaders and innovators who are working in the digital space.
This year, the contours of the Summit were shaped by the rapid and inexorable spread of COVID-19. Not only was the Summit convened virtually against the backdrop of the pandemic and the unprecedented levels of unemployment and economic hardship being experienced by Americans, it unfolded in the midst of a national crisis that was fueled by the spectacle of a nation in mourning for yet another black life lost as a consequence of racism.
There were several important highlights of the Summit:
News or information deserts. Sonni Efron of the National Press Foundation noted the astounding number of local sources of news that have disappeared nationally. This clearly is not good for democracy. The closure of local newspapers and other news outlets nationally almost makes it necessary that we fill the void that has been created. While anyone interested in access to information in the public commons should lament this, the combination of news deserts and the emergence of misinformation that creates a synergistic interaction which amplifies the problem of public skepticism has to worry us. This makes it all the more important that steps be taken to flag misinformation in social media, while at the same time illuminating the great need for media health literacy—points that were driven home brilliantly by Summit speakers Dr. Scott Ratzan and Victoria McCullough.
Disparities and equity in the digital space. The disparities are not only racial, they are economic and geographic and involve the risk of limited data access and privilege. In the case of COVID-19, and as Prof. Kadija Ferryman so eloquently pointed out, not only has this Coronavirus pandemic highlighted the deficiencies and limitations of the U.S. public health infrastructure and preparedness, it has revealed how the pandemic is exacerbating the existing health disparities in terms of exposures and mortality. But, apart from this, COVID-19 is now presenting us with an entirely new set of both opportunities and challenges in the way we have to think about misinformation, and how that is influencing our response in this latest public health crisis.
The ubiquity and the promise, perils, and pitfalls of social media in public health. Social media is giving public health a new opportunity to address and intervene on public health challenges, whether its vaping, opioids, or a Coronavirus pandemic. But as our closing panel discussed, while social media has given us new tools to address an ever-broadening range of such problems, it also creates new problems for us at the same time. These include numerous, thorny privacy, ethical, and social issues that once again bring us back to the dilemma of balancing private right with public good. So, social media has opened a powerful gateway for spreading health misinformation, and it has to be dealt with. My sense—and what I take away from the debate—is that this will require a patchwork of at least three elements: more industry efforts to monitor and control content, the kinds of legislative remedies Joey Wender described, and better public education that is designed to help people develop the literacy to better evaluate the information they consume and to separate out the potentially harmful content. This is especially imperative in the case of children and their parents who are trying to navigate social media with them.
As Lorien Abroms, Robert Gold and I wrote in our paper, Promoting Health on Social Media: The Way Forward, in the 2019 supplement issue of Health Education & Behavior:
“Public health historians have argued that creating effective hygiene and sanitation systems was the key public health challenge of the 19th century, and limiting tobacco consumption was the key challenge of the 20th century. Figuring out how to rein in the ill effects of social media as well as harness it by utilizing the data being generated by its ever-increasing use to more rapidly identify diseases and populations at risk are the defining public health challenge of the 21st century.”
Additional Reading
Abroms, L.C., Allegrante, J.P., Auld, M.E., Gold, R.S., Riley, W.T., & Smyser, J. (2019). Toward a common agenda for the public and private sectors to advance digital health communication. American Journal of Public Health, 109, 221-223.
Abroms, L. C., Gold, R. S., & Allegrante, J. P. (2019). Promoting health on social media: The way forward. Health Education & Behavior, 46(Suppl 2), 9S-11S.
Abroms, L. C., Gold, R. S., & Allegrante, J. P. (Eds.). (2019). Advancing the science and translation of digital health promotion information and communication technology. [Theme Supplement.] Health Education & Behavior, 46(Suppl).
Allegrante, J. P., & Auld, M. E. (2019). Advancing the promise of digital health and social media to promote population health. Health Education & Behavior, 46(Suppl 2), 5S-8S.
Allegrante, J. P., Auld, M.E., & Natarajan, S. (2020). Preventing COVID-19 and Its Sequela: “There Is No Magic Bullet . . . It's Just Behaviors.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2020.05.004
Gold, R. S., Auld, M. E., Abroms, L. C., Smyser, J., Yom-Tov, E., & Allegrante, J. P. (2019). Digital health communication common agenda 2.0: An updated consensus for the public and private sectors to advance public health. Health Education & Behavior, 46(Suppl 2), 124S-128S.
Riley, W. T., Oh, A., Aklin, W. M., Wolff-Hughes, D. L. (2019). National Institutes of Health Support of Digital Health Behavior Research. Health Education & Behavior, 46(Suppl 2), 12S-19S.
About the author
