Building trust in an environment of misinformation

Building trust in public health is important because it affects how well communities fare during public health emergencies. When people trust health experts, they are more likely to follow recommendations and engage in healthy behavior during health crises. However, trust in public health has been declining, partly due to the spread of misinformation. This decline in trust makes it harder to respond effectively to emergencies.

In order to rebuild trust and improve the public’s resilience to misinformation, health departments need to focus on strengthening a range of activities, including community engagement and public communication. 

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has developed a checklist to help public health departments and communicators build trust, improve public health communication, and anticipate misinformation during public health emergencies.

Learn more about the checklist

Exemplary practices

The Checklist contains recommendations backed by current communication science as well as the voices and lived experiences of experts and practitioners, but we also wanted to provide public health communicators the opportunity to learn more directly from their peers’ experiences. Watch below to hear the stories of public health communicators at three local health departments.