The Public and Health (Mis)information: What Polling Tells Us about Where We've Been and Where We Might Be Going.

Abstract

In 2021, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory, calling health misinformation "a serious threat to public health" and urging all Americans to help slow its spread. The public appears to agree; a 2023 KFF poll found three-quarters viewed the spread of false and inaccurate health information as "a major problem" (Lopes et al. 2023). While health misinformation has gained significant attention since the COVID-19 pandemic, the public's understanding of complex health issues has long been a challenge. In this essay, we reflect on over 30 years of polling to offer perspectives on how the public accesses, evaluates, and uses health information, and what recent trends may suggest about the future of the health information (and misinformation) environment. We start by examining public knowledge gaps on health and the role of partisanship in national health debates. We then look at how sources of health information have changed over time alongside declines in trust of information from government health agencies. We end by examining the current era of health misinformation, focusing on widespread uncertainty among the public and how increasing use of social media and emergent technologies have the potential to further complicate the landscape of health information and trust.