Worse Than Ignorance: The Challenge of Health Misinformation

This Element presents a systematic picture of how health communication failures pose risks for patients and healthcare professionals. Risks and damages unraveled before a backdrop of dreams of information technology, even enabling better health. The backdrop also drew attention to the communication apparatus surrounding us, its digital basis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a growing acceptance of the involvement of patients in medical decisions, with health literacy and patient empowerment linked to the central concept. There is no single culprit standing in the way of applying sound knowledge to achieve better health, but a network of influences and conditions making it difficult to distinguish accurate from inaccurate information. The problem brings us back to a perennial question-what are good reasons for knowing one is right? The problem of misinformation can be tackled, as promising examples of improved communication show. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.