The current pandemic and its devastating impact on communities has been the subject of speculation as to the extent to which misinformation being shared through a variety of communication channels is disproportionately worsening the outcomes for some groups more than others . This means there is an opportunity to improve health and wellbeing by better addressing misinformation through more tailored health and care communications . This has been the approach taken by a group of academics from the
University of Leeds , bringing together language , human-centred design , and other multi-disciplinary skills , into a collaboration that includes Yorkshire & Humber AHSN bringing a public and patient perspective to the work . We organised four events with a total of 58 people attending and actively engaging with the research , sharing their views , concerns and ideas .
The project has been funded through the University to develop an AI tool to detect COVID-19 and vaccine-related misinformation in tweets and other sources . We organised citizen panel meetings that have added considerable value and permitted the outputs to be compared with public views and perspectives . The next step is to involve health and care staff to secure further funding to expand the development and deployment of tools to improve the effectiveness of communications .
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