The COVID-19 pandemic has brought an unprecedented challenge to the public health domain. It has not only led to the spread of the virus globally, but also led to the proliferation of misinformation in the form of “Infodemic”.

Health misinformation can erode trust in the public healthcare system, lead people to fall for false preventive measures, encourage them to try unsubstantiated and unscientific therapies – all of which could lead them to harm and put their lives at risk. Addressing ‘infodemic’ requires strengthening the public health response and improving the Information ecosystem management to build resilience to health misinformation.

The curriculum is built in consultation with media literacy educators, academia and fact-checkers. The self-paced training course is primarily focused to help healthcare workers and institutions to build infodemic management competencies. The course will equip healthcare workers with necessary skills such as critical thinking, understanding human biases and learning fact checking tools to prebunk and debunk misinformation in the healthcare domain. It will also empower healthcare workers with best practice approaches and tools to help them deal with misinformation, and educate people who are influenced by unscientific claims and fake news about health, medicine and vaccination.

Upon successful completion of the course, participants will receive a certificate of completion of the course.

The self-paced training course consists of six modules and each module is on-demand video of 10 to 12 minutes. The training modules are developed in English and will have subtitles in Portuguese and Spanish.

Eligibility Criteria:

Healthcare Professionals such as doctors, public health workers, hospital administrator pharmacists, nurses, vaccinators, medical researchers and consultants can apply for the course. Besides the healthcare professionals the course is open to anyone interested in infodemic management in public health.