Battling Misinformation and Disinformation: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in the Digital Age

The USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health, in partnership with Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, invites you to join us for “Battling Misinformation and Disinformation: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in the Digital Age” on Thursday, January 25th at 9:00 am PST/6:00 pm CET. 

Technology, social media, and digital health interventions have the potential to play positive and transformative roles to address health-related inequalities. This is possible despite the distinct geographic, economic, and social gaps in design and access to these technologies, whether because of gender, disability, race and other factors critical to health and well-being. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the area of sexual and reproductive health and rights. Increasingly, digital spaces are rife with misinformation and disinformation, intersecting closely with barriers in access to/control over technology, digital literacy, and online safety. This one-hour virtual event will bring together key actors to discuss how they address misinformation and disinformation in our current digital age impacting sexual and reproductive health and rights, with a particular focus on sexuality education, contraception and abortion. Panelists will discuss strategies to address these challenges and to ensure that the transformative potential of technology can support agency, bodily autonomy and decision-making for all individuals.

The dialogue will be moderated by IIGH Director Sofia Gruskin.

The webinar is hosted by the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health and co-sponsored by Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters. 

Please join us on Thursday, January 25th at 9:00 am PST/6:00 pm CET.

Speakers:

Anne Philpott is a public health professional, pleasure propagandist and 'guerrilla girl' of HIV prevention. She founded 'The Pleasure Project’ in 2004. The Pleasure Project forges connections between the worlds of public health, academia, and the media and is globally recognized as the agency that has championed putting pleasure into safer sex education. In the ever-increasing battles against misinformation and disinformation in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights, the Pleasure Project has been creating sexy sexual health content for 20 years in an attempt to create a ‘new pleasure path’ between the boring and scary biomedically focused sex education most of us endure, and the explicit, inaccurate and non-rights based pornographic content that has become the norm for most people’s sexual education. They have influenced many agencies to deliver more effective and relevant sex education and worked with the World Association of Sexual Health to launch the first declaration of pleasure. Anne has over 20 peer-reviewed articles in respected health journals and more in the mainstream media, and has been a speaker at international conferences, promoting pleasure in sex education and as the ultimate indicator of female empowerment. Anne developed her passion for sexual and public health through working with one of the UK’s first teenage pregnancy projects in the UK, domestic violence refuges in London, starting many of the world’s first internal condom programs and working in South Africa during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Anne has a degree in Psychology and a Masters (MSc) in Health Policy from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Eszter Kismödi is an international human rights lawyer specializing in sexuality, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and gender diversity. She has worked in legal and policy development, advocacy and programming in different regions of the world, including Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. Eszter has been a senior consultant with United Nations agencies, including UNAIDS, UNHCR, UNDP, and OHCHR, and international organizations, such as the World Association for Sexual Health, and international NGOs, such as CREA, where she served as Advocacy Director. Between 2002 and 2012, she was the Human Rights Adviser at the Department of Reproductive Health and Research of the World Health Organization. Eszter is a regular guest lecturer at various universities and has published extensively in international journals. She is a member of the WHO’s Global Advisory Board on Elimination of Mother and Child Transmission of HIV and Syphilis, and a Board Member of GATE (Global Action for Trans Equality). Previously she served as a member of WHO’s Ethics Review Committee and SRHM’s Editorial Advisory Board. She has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School and is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Global Health Justice Partnership of Yale Law School and Yale School of Public Health. Eszter holds a juris doctor from the University of Pécs and a Master of Laws from the University of Toronto. A Hungarian national, Eszter is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Kat Lo is Content Moderation Lead for Meedan and a Research Affiliate at the Center for Responsible, Ethical, and Accessible Technology at UC Irvine. Her research focuses on the development of moderation tools and norms within online communities, user reporting, and escalation channels for online abuse, hate, and misinformation on technology platforms. She works with organizations to identify and manage mental health risks people face in fact-checking and moderation work. She advises civil rights, mental health, and online safety organizations in matters of online harassment defense, moderation tooling, educational resources, and online community health. Much of this work is in support of technology-supported collective action for marginal and underserved communities.

Leeza Mangaldas is India's foremost pleasure positive content creator, author of The Sex Book: A Joyful Journey of Self-Discovery (published by HarperCollins), and founder of pleasure and intimacy products brand, Lee's. Her sex education videos on social media reach millions of people in India and around the world, daily. Leeza has won several awards for her work, and is a UN Women Ally. She's proud to have been a recipient of The Pleasure Project Fellowship.


Moderator:

Sofia Gruskin directs the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health (IIGH). She is Professor of Preventive Medicine and Chief of the Disease Prevention, Policy and Global Health Division at the Keck School of Medicine, and Professor of Law and Preventive Medicine at the Gould School of Law. Prof. Gruskin currently sits on numerous international boards and committees including the PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board, the Lancet Commission on Gender and Global Health, the IUSSP Steering Committee to Strengthen Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems, and the Lancet Commission on Health and Human Rights. Prof. Gruskin has published extensively, including several books, training manuals and edited journal volumes, and more than 200 articles and chapters covering a wide range of topics.