adults believe “false and misleading information about the coronavirus and vaccines has contributed a lot to problems the country” has faced amid the pandemic. Meanwhile, a report published in October by the Pew Research Center found 57% of U.S. “One would think we would learn from this.” “The good guys need to be just as well organized as those who seek to do harm to the nation,” he said. In late 2020, the foundation, working with other public health groups, established the Public Health Communications Collaborative to amplify easy-to-understand information about vaccines. The more than 3,000 public health departments nationwide stand to benefit from a unified message, he said. At the same time, a small but vocal minority pushes an anti-science agenda and has been effective in sowing seeds of distrust, he said. Most Americans support public health, Castrucci said. “We have to own the fact that our communication missteps created the environment where disinformation flourished.” “We have to communicate complex ideas to the public, and this is where we fail,” said Brian Castrucci, CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, a charitable group focused on strengthening public health. Scientific words such as “mRNA technology,” “bivalent vaccine,” and “monoclonal antibodies” are used a lot in public health even though many people find them difficult to understand.Ī study published by JAMA found that COVID-related language used by state-level agencies was often more complex than an eighth-grade reading level and harder to understand than the language commonly used by the CDC. Agency staffers have also become more comfortable talking to the press, she said, to better communicate with the public.īut some public health experts argue that agencies are still failing on messaging. To that end, the health department has partnered with local leaders and groups to encourage vaccinations. “We’re really just trying to dispel misinformation that’s out there,” Traxler said. Those who have opted out of both the COVID-19 and flu shots seem to be correlated, Traxler said. The flu vaccine rate across all age groups in the U.S. In South Carolina, not even one-quarter of adults and children eligible for a flu shot had been vaccinated by early December, even as flu cases and hospitalizations climbed. Last year was the first year, for example, that South Carolina published data on flu vaccinations every two weeks, with the goal of raising awareness about the effectiveness of the shots. The agency has changed its communication strategies in other ways, too. Brannon Traxler, director of public health at the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.Īt the start of the pandemic, Traxler said, only two people worked on the media relations and public outreach team at South Carolina’s health department. “We were not as flexible as we are now,” said Dr. For example, during COVID-19's early days, many local health departments used fax machines to report case counts. This made their response to a once-in-a-century public health crisis challenging and often inadequate. State and local health agencies also lost nearly 40,000 jobs between the 2008 recession and the emergence of the pandemic. An analysis conducted by KHN and The Associated Press found local health department spending dropped by 18% per capita between 20. Part of the problem comes down to a lack of investment that eroded the public health system before the pandemic began. Suspicion swirling around once-trusted vaccines, as well as fatigue from so many shots, is likely to blame. Nationally, 35% of all American parents oppose requiring children to be vaccinated for measles, mumps, and rubella before entering school, up from 23% in 2019, according to a KFF survey released Dec. Other common childhood vaccination rates are down, too, compared with pre-pandemic levels. The decrease in flu vaccination coverage among pregnant women was even more dramatic over the last two years: 18 percentage points lower. Flu vaccine coverage among children in mid-December was about the same as December 2021, but it was 3.7 percentage points lower compared with late 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. residents have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine.īut data suggests that the skepticism and misinformation surrounding COVID-19 vaccines now threatens other public health priorities. They’re collaborating with influencers and celebrities such as Stephen Colbert and Akbar Gbajabiamila to extend their reach. Agencies are using Twitter, for example, to appeal to niche audiences, such as NFL fans in Kansas City and Star Wars enthusiasts in Alabama. Across the country, health officials have been trying to combat misinformation and restore trust within their communities these past few years, a period when many people haven’t put full faith in their state and local health departments.
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