HEAL Network Investigators Webinar: Science Communication for Health

Wednesday 23 September 12-1pm online

Presenter: Elena Schak

Human health is incredibly complex: it can be impacted by any number of factors, from individual decisions to society-wide policies or culture, and even global climate and environmental influences. Compounding this complexity, health information is now more widely available than ever before, leading to a quantity of information so great that it has been called an ‘infodemic’. The complexity and ubiquity of health information make it difficult for most people to decipher, and to determine what information to trust. One result of this is a decline in trust in healthcare and health science, alongside related fields like climate science. This situation is being exacerbated by both unintentional and deliberate campaigns to spread disinformation and misinformation about health issues, evinced by rising vaccine hesitancy and the boom of the wellness industry. These trends threaten both individual and collective health, complicate health professionals’ jobs, and impede efforts to garner resources for collective health action.

One means of addressing these challenges is through science communication, the translation of complex scientific information into information that its intended audience can potentially understand, trust and engage with. Science communication is usually understood as a tool that helps experts communicate authoritative information with an inexpert majority, such as the wider community, policy-makers, politicians or funding bodies. However, with the infinite, complex factors that influence health, and consequently, the need for people from many different fields to work together to protect health, science communication has an important role to play in enabling transdisciplinary knowledge-sharing, collaboration, and action.

One of the most effective science communication techniques comes from storytelling. Storytelling, whether oral, written, or in visual mediums, like film or photography, can help to tackle communication challenges, including misinformation and disinformation, to empower it audience, and to promote action. This talk will examine some of the challenges that create the need for science communication in the health field. Using excerpts from science communication films, it will also demonstrate the potential of storytelling techniques for dealing with the current health information crisis.

Elena Schak has a background in law, media and cultural studies, and international development (focusing on gender and governance). She is a filmmaker and academic with research interests in climate change, public health, gender, politics, communications and cultural studies. She specialises in teaching people to communicate complex ideas, both written and oral, through storytelling.

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