Information Sharing and Community Resilience: Toward a Whole Community Approach to Surveillance and Combatting the “Infodemic”

• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Author: Nathan Myers
• Date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.428

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doi: 10.1002/wmh3.428

© 2021 Policy Studies Organization

World Medical & Health Policy, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2021

Information Sharing and Community Resilience: Toward

a Whole Community Approach to Surveillance and

Combatting the “Infodemic”

Nathan Myers

Developing and strengthening systems for information sharing as well as detecting and addressing

dis/misinformation can not only protect capacity for public health emergency preparedness and

response, but potentially increase overall community resilience and social capital. More actively

involving citizens in the government's collection and sharing of information can generate more public

buy‐in so people will be more invested in making certain that such information is not arbitrarily

dismissed or drowned out by conspiracy theories. Such an approach may have the added the benefit of

creating stronger collaborative connections between government, individual citizens, and civic or-

ganizations to promote overall resilience. More community involvement in terms of the collection and

dissemination of information can provide value in terms of preparation for a public health emergency

by bolstering surveillance efforts to detect a threat early on. Getting the public more integrated into

the public health information system can also be valuable in terms of diminishing the threat of mis/

disinformation. Building up relationships between the public and the public health sector can advance

the mission of improving community resilience through education, engagement, and collaboration. In

this review, we will examine existing evidence for this approach and will then conclude with possible

new approaches.

KEY WORDS: information sharing, public health emergency preparedness and response, public

health surveillance

Introduction

Developing and strengthening systems for information sharing as well as de-

tecting and addressing dis/misinformation can not only protect capacity for public

health emergency preparedness and response, but potentially increase overall

community resilience and social capital. LeBlanc, Ekperi, Kosmos, and Avchen

(2019)raise the important question of how do we ensure that virtual communities

are prepared for disasters given that the Internet allows almost universal sharing of

both information and mis/disinformation, while at the same time providing the

opportunity to interact with only news sources that agree with their perspective?

One approach, discussed in the following paper, would be to more actively involve

citizens in the government's collection and sharing of information so that they will

be more invested in making certain that such information is not arbitrarily dis-

missed or drowned out by conspiracy theories. Such an approach may have the