New International Awards from the FPM for trusted Medical Writing in Social Media

Medical society the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine is partnering with its journals – Health Policy and Technology and the Postgraduate Medical Journal – to launch international awards for well-informed, clear writing on health matters in social media. 

Patients, members of the public, health professionals and policymakers increasingly use social media as a source for health information and to guide important decisions on choices and actions about prevention and treatment of disease. Where the information is accurate and easy to follow, this can be very helpful. However, we are increasingly at the mercy of a spectrum of unreliability, from incomplete or inaccurate reports, to claims that inconvenient truths are ‘fake news’.

These are not new problems. Sinclair Lewis in his geopolitical satire of 1935 It Can’t Happen Here refers to fake news in the political domain [1]. George Orwell features unreliable reporting by government-controlled media in his dystopian 1984 [2]. However, the geographical reach and speed of spread of reports in current social media and present numerous ways to disseminate ‘alternative facts’ have new global implications for the consequences ofunreliable ‘news’ [3].

Concerns in the health sector include social media posts making spurious health claims for ‘alternative medicines’ and containing misinformation about causes, severity and treatments of disease – from coronaviruses [4] and HIV infection [5] to cancers [6]. A striking example of the serious impact on the public of misinformation is a sustained large increase in vaccine hesitancy for measles and other immunisations since the late 1990s [7]. This arose from a later withdrawn report in the Lancet of a link between autism and measles immunisation [8]. Although findings in the report were judged to be fraudulent, anti-vaccine activists persist in providing misleading information on social media based on this report. Particularly worrying is how difficult it continues to be for international public health authorities to counter this vaccine hesitancy. Immunisation rates against measles remain sub-optimal 22 years after the original flawed report [8]. Social media undoubtedly plays a role here, and its potency is reflected in the fact that just one source is enough to disseminate and propagate untruths [9]. However, this very potency also represents a means to inform and educate patients, members of the public, health professionals and policymakers.

The FPM International Awards for Medical Writing in Social Media are new annual awards for medical graduates from anywhere in the world. To be eligible, an article or blog must be in English and should have been published online between 1st July 2019 and the closing date for the awards: 30th June 2020. There will be up to 5 prizes per year. Each award winner will receive a £100 prize. Award winners will also have winning content published in one of the FPM’s journals, either Health Policy and Technology or the Postgraduate Medical Journal.

For more details and information about how to enter online, see the website for the FPM International Awards for Medical Writing in Social Media.

References

1. Sinclair Lewis. It Can’t Happen Here. 1935, Doubleday, Doran and Company. ISBN 045121658X.

2. George Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel.  1949, Secker and Warberg. OCLC 470015866.

3. Launer J. The production of ignorance.  Postgrad Med J 2020 xxxxxx.

4. Frédéric Lemaître. China denounces being placed under quarantine. Le Monde. 4th February 2020.

5. National AIDS Trust. HIV fake news: NAT sets out to tackle misinformation. December 1st, 2017

 www.nat.org.uk/press-release/hiv-fake-news-nat-sets-out-tackle-misinformation Accessed 4th February, 2020.

6. Bessi A, Coletto M, Davidescu GA, et al. Science vs conspiracy: collective narratives in the age of misinformation. PLoS One. 2015;10:118093.

7. Vaccine Hesitancy. European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/immunisation-vaccines/vaccine-hesitancy Accessed 29th January 2020.

8. Retracted Lancet 2010;375:445: Wakefield AJ, Murch, SH, Linnell J et al. Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet 1998;351:637-641.

9. Waszakab PM, Kasprzycka-Waszak W, AlicjaKubanek, A. The spread of medical fake news in social media – The pilot quantitative study. Health Policy Technol 2018;7(2):115-118.