A local group has been fighting inaccurate information on Facebook pages. Called the Alaska Public Health Information Response Team, it enlists UAA strategic communications students to spot the bad information, and local health professionals to intervene with posts on Facebook that introduce accurate information.
Ruby Fried, assistant professor of Health Science, and Micah Hahn, assistant professor of Environmental Health, of the Institute for Circumpolar Health Sciences within the Div. of Population Health Sciences, have co-authored an article, titled “COVID-19 in Remote Alaska Communities: A Longitudinal View of a Novel Pandemic.” This statewide, longitudinal study on remote communities provides a perspective based on the lived experience of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people living in remote Arctic communities, and an opportunity for evidence- and strengths-based responses to the many impacts of COVID-19.
Micah Hahn, assistant professor of environmental health in UAA's Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies, was recently one of seven recipients awarded a $76,000 Early-Career Research Fellowship from the Gulf Research Program (GRP) of the National Academies. The seven fellows were selected for the Human and Community Resiliency Track, one of three new tracks GRP launched earlier this year. They will spend the next two years pursuing research contributing to advancing health equity and examining the social determinants of health in the Gulf States of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Texas and Alaska.
As the world continues to navigate this once-in-a-generation pandemic, new scientific breakthroughs are unearthed every day and are widely accessible online. Accompanying this free flow of information, however, is an increase of damaging misinformation, referred to by the World Health Organization as an Infodemic.
As misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic seemingly spills into almost every nook and cranny of the internet, some public health professionals in Alaska are countering false claims and myths in an embattled space: Facebook comment threads.
