Nearly one in three people in the North East know someone who has been “seriously harmed” by making a health decision based on misinformation, according to new research from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). This makes the region almost twice as likely to have been affected as the South East or East Midlands.
Regional divide in misinformation harm
The national report, Health Misinformation: Public Perceptions of Threat to the UK, found that close to one in three people in the North East know someone in that situation. The university's director, Prof Liam Smeeth, said: “Our previous analysis found that a fifth of UK adults say they know someone who has suffered serious harm as a result of health misinformation.”
“What this new analysis suggests is that even those living in neighbouring regions of England could be experiencing very different levels of harm from misinformation or have very different experiences while attempting to judge the accuracy of health claims or find reliable health information,” he added.
Call for local and national action
The LSHTM experts said examples of serious harm included someone becoming ill with a preventable disease, treatment delays, or someone being affected by symptoms for longer than necessary. The report calls for more to be done to tackle this at a local and national level.
Among initiatives in the North East, the She Thrives NE network is working to ensure that women in particular can access evidence-based information. Last month, founder Barbora Gray said: “Qualified healthcare professionals who are sharing evidence-based information online should be actively supported and encouraged to do more of it - with structured backing, resources and time from health communication teams, not just goodwill and their own free hours.”
Ms Gray was speaking in response to comments from paediatrician Dr Lillie Parker, who has more than 100,000 followers on Instagram. Dr Parker said at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) Conference in Manchester: “I think public health needs to realise, that for better or worse, humans are craving human interaction. A carousel post of text coming from an organisation is not what the public are going to engage in.”
National priorities and next steps
The national picture shows that over half (54%) of UK adults picked educating the public on how to identify false or misleading health information as one of their top three priorities. LSHTM is inviting health authorities in the North East to collaborate with its Health Information Integrity Network.
NHS England launched an account on TikTok during the summer, following a warning from national medical director Professor Frankie Swords that people are seeking out health information from “unreliable” sources.
