You can find a range of project outputs here. Visit the Trustworthiness Talks section below for additional interviews with global health thinkers across agencies and geographies, including physician-scientists, virologists and policy makers.
At the present moment there is widespread despondency, even despair, across medicine and biomedical research about the descending trajectory of trust in science generally, and public health programs specifically. From local general practice to neglected tropical diseases, and within national and international public health programs there is a perversive anxiety about what the future holds.
In the age of fake news, misinformation and disinformation, there is a growing need to communicate evidence-based public health information more effectively and in ways that are easily understood and accessible. Situated at the confluence of the scientific and the social this ambitious three-year interdisciplinary study prioritises storytelling and knowledge sharing, and has three specific strands: (1) to explore the relationship between trustworthiness, policymaking, public opinion and the climate and health sciences; (2) to understand the culturally and socially contingent nature of trust and trustworthiness in diverse national and regional contexts; (3) to create a forum for dialogue between practitioners to collaboratively advance thinking on trustworthiness in global health and to communicate project findings with a range of public audiences to engage with public feedback and responses. Importantly, this project offers hope as an antidote to misinformation and disinformation by building networks of committed people and using the power and primacy of storytelling to improve trustworthiness in evidence-based research.
As part of a listening and gathering process for the project ‘Improving Trustworthiness in Global Health’, Conrad Keating interviewed thinkers across agencies and geographies including physician-scientists, virologists, policy makers and global health leaders. These short interviews address a range of subjects from disinformation and declining global health budgets, to how the changing geopolitical context and the rise of defensive nationalism will affect global public health programmes over the coming decades.
Stay tuned... recordings to come.
Contact
Conrad Keating is adjunct professor and writer-in-residence at the School of Medicine, University College Dublin. Based in Infectious Research Ireland (formally CEPHR), he works primarily on the modern history of medicine, with a particular interest in global health and public engagement. Keating’s research interests centre on the interconnections between the social history of medicine and societal change, with a particular focus on decisive moments in global health over the past one hundred years.
For further information, contact: (opens in a new window)conrad.keating@ucd.ie