
Communicators Require New Approaches to Build Trust in Science and Public Health
The Global Accountability Platform (COVID GAP) blog series. January 25, 2023 By Nellie Bristol Public health communicators need to change their approaches to ensure that those hesitant about vaccines “will adopt the desirable behavior and feel good about it,” said Michelle Williams, dean of faculty and professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She appeared with other panelists January 18 at a World Economic Forum (WEF) roundtable on the State of the Pandemic. “The worst thing we did in the U.S. was when people expressed hesitancy or curiosity, we basically said to them, ‘follow the science.’ And that’s the absolute wrong thing to do,” Williams said. Instead, communicators need to “take the approach of meeting them where they are,” help them understand the risks and the benefits, and…