249 trainees participate in the third infodemic conference

Just like an illness pandemic, an infodemic is too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments. It causes confusion and risk-taking behaviours that can harm health. It leads to mistrust in health authorities.

An infodemic can intensify or lengthen outbreaks when people are unsure about what they need to do to protect their health of themselves and that of the people around them. Infodemic management is the systematic use of risk- and evidence-based analysis and approaches to manage the infodemic and reduce its impact on health behaviours during health emergencies.

The infodemic management aims to enable good health practices through 4 activities including listening to community concerns and questions, promoting understanding of risk and health expert advice, building resilience to misinformation and engaging and empowering communities to take positive action.

In order to create awareness on infodemic and train people about it, the WHO has partnered up with US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and RCCE collective service.

In order to create awareness on infodemic and train people about it, the WHO has partnered up with US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and RCCE collective service.

Over 740 applications were received and 275 were selected to be part of the first cohort of trainees. WHO continued the process of training the people regarding infodemic. In order to successfully address and mitigate the current infodemic and promote more effective future response, conference participants of the WHO first infodemiology conference contributed to the WHO public health research agenda for managing infodemics that cuts across many fields of specialization.

From physics to law to behavioral science to epidemiology to user experience and design. "It is clear that an infodemic manager would need a wider array of skills and expertise to successfully address infodemics that go beyond traditional boundaries of epidemiology, risk communication and community engagement and digital media.

WHO, US CDC, ECDC, UNICEF and partners invite applications from various backgrounds to work unitedly with a purpose to build up the skills of health authority staff in infodemic management and offer an opportunity for UN staff to learn about infodemic management and become the basis for creating future infodemic training facility training modules.

The 3rd WHO infodemic manager training having 249 trainees ended last week. The training was co-hosted by the US CDC and supported by UNICEF and RCCE collective service. Trainees came from 82 countries representing all 6 WHO regions.