Electronic Communication and the Rapid Dissemination of Public Health Information

Lack of high-quality multilingual resources can contribute to disparities in the availability of medical and public health information. The COVID-19 pandemic has required rapid dissemination of essential guidance to diverse audiences and therefore provides an ideal context in which to study linguistic fairness in the U.S. Here we report a cross-sectional study of official non-English information about COVID-19 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the health departments of all 50 U.S. states. We find that multilingual information is limited in many states, such that almost half of all individuals not proficient in English or Spanish lack access to state-specific COVID-19 guidance in their primary language. Although Spanish-language information is widely available, we show using automated readability formulas that most materials do not follow standard recommendations for clear communication in medicine and public health. In combination, our results provide a snapshot of linguistic unfairness across the U.S. and highlight an urgent need for the creation of plain language, multilingual resources about COVID-19.

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Public Health Information Network Conference, August 27-29, 2007

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e614822007-005 ◽

2007 ◽

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Health Information ◽

Information Network ◽

Public Health Information

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eTick: A Lyme disease surveillance and public health information tool

10.1603/ice.2016.116167 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Jules Koffi

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Lyme Disease ◽

Health Information ◽

Disease Surveillance ◽

Public Health Information

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Japanese-language videos on YouTube as a source of public health information for COVID-19 (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.24655 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Takeo Yasu

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Health Information ◽

Scientific Evidence ◽

The State ◽

Video Content ◽

Sources Of Information ◽

State Of Emergency ◽

Public Health Information ◽

Youtube Videos ◽

Spread Of Infection

BACKGROUND Serious public health problems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can cause an infodemic. Sources of information that may cause an infodemic include social networking services; YouTube, which consists of content created and uploaded by individuals, is one such source. OBJECTIVE To survey the content and changes in YouTube videos that present public health information about COVID-19 in Japan. METHODS We surveyed YouTube content regarding public health information pertaining to COVID-19 in Japan. YouTube searches were performed on March 6, 2020 (before the state of emergency), April 14 (during the state of emergency), and May 27 (after the state of emergency was lifted), with 136, 113, and 140 sample videos evaluated, respectively. The main outcome measures were: (1) The total number of views for each video, (2) video content, and (3) the usefulness of the video. RESULTS In the 100 most viewed YouTube videos during the three periods, the number of videos on public health information in March was significantly higher than in May (p = .02). Of the 331 unique videos, 9.1% (n = 30) were released by healthcare professionals. Useful videos providing public health information about the prevention of the spread of infection comprised only 13.0% of the sample but were viewed significantly more often than not useful videos (p = .006). CONCLUSIONS Individuals need to take care when obtaining information from YouTube before or early in a pandemic, during which time scientific evidence is scarce.

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