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

Myers, Nathan

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 organizations 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.