Camille Boivigny – Health Misinformation

Project origins – You devoted 11 months of voluntary work to this white paper. What was the trigger that led you to launch such an ambitious project on women’s health misinformation?

As healthcare professionals, we are potentially exposed to misinformation in our own field on a daily basis – directly through the social media channels that spread it, and indirectly through our patients who, consciously or not, relay it to us.

In the absence of an institutional or even legal framework to combat this scourge, Catherine Bertrand Ferrandis decided to take action within the Collectif Femmes de Santé. She proposed a working group on the subject, and around fifteen professionals naturally responded to her call – the cause felt too essential not to champion.

Assessment – The 2024 barometer reveals that 80% of women do not feel fully informed about their health, while at the European level, 43% of misinformation posts on social media relate specifically to health. How do you explain this particular vulnerability among women?

Factually, women seek out information about the specificities of their own health – if only during pregnancy. They are also still, in many households, the ones primarily responsible for children’s health, and therefore the ones searching for health-related information. The boundary between health and wellness is also sometimes very blurry, or even non-existent, which again puts women on the front line. More broadly, women are de facto more involved in the social, psychological, nutritional, quality-of-life, and prevention aspects that are closely tied to health.

Understanding the mechanisms – In your white paper, you clearly distinguish misinformation (shared without intent to harm) from disinformation (intentionally deceptive). Can you give us concrete examples of each in the area of women’s health?

Misinformation can take the form of advice shared on an internet forum, for instance: the person sharing it means no harm and genuinely believes in the benefits of a particular plant-based substance. Without solid scientific knowledge, however, such advice can prove harmful in cases of chronic conditions like kidney failure. That said, practitioners of non-conventional care do not intentionally produce false information with the aim of deceiving or causing harm.

Disinformation, on the other hand, can be found in the marketing of the wellness industry, in poorly identifiable sponsored content, ghostwriting, selective use of data, non-conventional care practices, complementary and alternative medicines, or pseudosciences.

Identifying the sources of the problem – Which actors or channels have you identified as the main vectors of intentional disinformation? Are there any “red flags” that would help women recognize them more easily?

Social networks are, by definition, among the primary vectors. The systematic absence of cited, reliable sources is a significant warning sign. Content that plays on emotions – triggering a strong emotional response – should raise suspicion, as should marketing hook techniques in general: “sale ends tonight,” “buy two for the price of one,” and so on. The rise of generative AI risks producing an even greater flood of disinformation.

The virtuous triangle as a solution – You propose an innovative “virtuous triangle” model bringing together scientific expertise, local care teams, and community. Concretely, how could a woman “triangulate” her health information on a daily basis?

The idea behind the virtuous triangle of information is that when patients triangulate information about their condition – consciously or not – they receive reliable and consistent information from three types of actors:

• Therapeutic expertise
• Local care team
• Community (e.g., patient associations)

The key idea behind this virtuous triangle is that we need to focus on coordinating information across these three sources, not just on transferring information directly to the patient.

In practice, a woman could apply a simple journalistic principle: cross-check information and verify it against reliable sources. She could also consult her general practitioner for guidance toward a verified public health information website (such as Santé Publique France). If she has a chronic condition, she could connect with patient associations or patient partners – building herself a genuinely healthy information ecosystem.

The central role of healthcare professionals – You position healthcare professionals as key actors, yet only 66% of women consult them first for a health question (compared to 19% who turn to the internet or AI). What obstacles prevent them from (re)becoming these “trusted mediators”?

When surveyed, French people still consider healthcare professionals the most trusted and authoritative source on health matters. Ideally, they should also be the first source of information patients encounter. In reality, however, they have far less exposure time and reach than some influencers, for example. Some are also not particularly tech-savvy and have yet to embrace new communication channels. Medical deserts also represent a barrier to accessing a trusted professional, and the lack of time – both human and medical – is frequently cited as well.

Traceability and transparency – You highlight that the wellness industry (worth $6.3 trillion) thrives partly thanks to a lack of transparency around sources and commercial partnerships. What concrete traceability and authentication mechanisms would allow women to instantly distinguish scientifically validated information from disguised commercial content?

All advertorial content is normally labeled as such, and advertising for medications is prohibited in France. It is therefore worth checking whether such a mention appears – sometimes in very small print – on the content in question. Verifying the source of the information is equally essential (a pharmaceutical company behind a campaign, for example). The core issue with wellness products is that they are not classified as medications, which means their advertising is not prohibited and is not regulated in the same way.

Taking action – Beyond the diagnosis, you propose over 300 recommendations to all stakeholders. If you had to identify three priority actions with the greatest immediate impact on protecting women from misinformation, which would you choose?

• Information literacy and critical thinking education

• Identification of reliable public health information sources

• Training all women to recognize information manipulation

Adapting health information to different audiences – culturally, socio-economically, and in terms of needs – is also essential. So is mapping what women actually want to know, rather than assuming we, as healthcare professionals, already know what questions they are asking.

A call for collective action – Your white paper insists that “every stakeholder holds part of the solution.” What message would you like to send to tech and digital players, who are today the primary channels through which health information is distributed?

Tech and digital players have a decisive role to play in the fight against health misinformation. We are calling on them to make concrete commitments across four priority areas:

• Accountability
• Citizen education (prebunking, debunking)
• Information quality charter
• Source transparency

Technology is neither the problem nor the solution on its own: everything depends on how we use it. Digital players today have the opportunity to become decisive allies in protecting women’s health.

Source: European project SIMODS – Structural Indicators to Monitor Online Disinformation Scientifically