In a time of digital manipulation and public mistrust, a new global framework must treat quality health information as essential infrastructure that saves lives
Now more than ever: We need quality health information for all
communicated science, data and evidence formed the bedrock of rational decision-making in pursuit of societal health and happiness. My training as a physician and my graduate education at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government – first earning a master’s in public administration in the late 1980s and three decades later as a senior fellow – reinforced my absolute belief in the value of a health system guided by ethical principles and humanistic concern. Those experiences taught me the importance of investment in communication alongside multisectoral engagement bringing together government, the private sector, civil society, communities and academia to support health equity and progress. WHEN THE PILLARS START TO CRACK Today this seemingly logical concept of ethical health communication with multisectoral engagement faces unprecedented threats. In the United States and globally, we see deep and indiscriminate funding cuts to health-related initiatives once considered essential to global solidarity. Institutions such as the WHO, Gavi, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USAID and PEPFAR – pillars of international health progress – today face retrenchment or outright dismantling. The first seismic blow of 2025 was the
I nformation can save lives – or cost them. As public health challenges abound, this truth becomes increasingly undeniable. Intensified global attacks on vaccines, driven by proliferating unreliable health information that some at the World Health Organization term an infodemic, have spawned a global resurgence of measles and undercut the future promise of mRNA vaccine technology. Yet many scientists and health officials have been slow to recognise that quality health information itself can mitigate these public health crises. I was raised in a now distant era, when effectively
Scott C Ratzan, co-chair, Nature Medicine Commission on Quality Health Information for All
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Health: A Political Choice – The Future of Health in a Fractured World
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