Center for Health Communication
The Center for Health Communication prepares public health leaders of all kinds to effectively communicate critical health information, influence policy decisions, counter misinformation, and increase the public’s trust in health expertise.
Creator Research
In an era where more and more of us are getting health news and information from social media, could creators help public health counter misinformation and disseminate evidence-based science?
The Center for Health Communication is conducting innovative, community-engaged research to answer this question.
In collaboration with creators and others working in the creator economy, we are building the evidence-base for the effectiveness of public health x creator partnerships.
Our current research questions include:
How does exposure to evidence toolkits affect creators?
Our recent field experiment on TikTok showed that exposure to our public-health toolkits increased the amount of evidence-based content that creators made: These inexpensive, scalable supports can “influence the influencers” to spread evidence-based health information.
How does “influencing the influencers” affect the health beliefs and behaviors of their audiences?
We are using semi-automated methods to examine how our creator supports changed the mental health discourse in the hundreds of thousands of audience comments left on participating creators’ videos.
We are also collaborating with leading creators to field survey-based randomized controlled trials of social video content made with our creator supports. We are measuring how such content influences the health beliefs and behaviors of those who watch it.
How does attending events like the Creators Summit on Mental Health impact creators?
Using quantitative and qualitative methods, we are studying how creators who participated in the summit view themselves, their community, and their motivations to make content.
How can we make our supports more useful to creators?
In collaboration with Social Currant, we are studying how we might optimize the delivery and format of toolkits and briefings to inspire more creators to use them.