Health Misinformation: How Did We Get Here?

In this episode of A Moment in Health, Dr. Ashish Jha highlights the steep administrative costs of Medicaid work requirements and breaks down a new study estimating that U.S. foreign aid programs via USAID have saved 90 million lives in the past two decades, with an additional 14 million lives at stake by 2030 if funding cuts persist.Professor of the Practice Stefanie Friedhoff joins to answer a timely question: How did we arrive at this moment of rampant public health misinformation? She explains how trust, online relationships, and unmet informational needs shape what people believe—and why traditional fact-based communication can fall short.Dr. Jha discusses:Recent Experience Shows National Medicaid Work Requirements Would Create Enormous Administrative Inefficiencies — Health AffairsEvaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis — The LancetAbout the GuestStefanie Friedhoff is co-founder of the Information Futures Lab (IFL) and Professor of the Practice at the Brown University School of Public Health. She is a leading media, communications and global health strategist, and an expert at knowledge translation, information creation, and verification. From July 2022 to May 2023, Friedhoff served as a senior policy advisor on the White House Covid-19 Response Team, focusing on population information needs, health equity, community engagement, and medical countermeasure uptake. At Brown, Friedhoff studies information ecosystems and the relationships between information needs, information inequities, and health outcomes.About the HostDr. Ashish K. Jha is the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.Music by Katherine Beggs, additional music by Lulu West and Maya Polsky