How factchecking organizations can partner within public health for a healthier internet

Abstract Background Health concerns, narratives and misinformation are growing in digital spaces, which makes them also a vulnerability to being hijacked by disinformation. A workshop was held at GlobalFact11, the global factchecking summit, to take a pulse among the participants on their exposure and work with health misinformation, provide a public health perspective on the role of factchecking, and equip participants with building a business case for developing health-related factchecking programmes. Methods A pre-summit survey of IFCN members and summit participants was conducted to better tune the design of the discussion in the workshop. The workshop included interactive polling and a discussion of case-based scenarios and real-world examples. Results A business case for investing into health-claim fact-checking can consider needs of public health organizations from a variety of perspectives. (1) The global health security agenda, and the politicization of health and hijacking in disinformation influence campaigns; (2) Contributing data for public health infodemic insights reports in formats that provide value to fact-checking in public health context; (3) Developing community resilience programmes by combining fact-checking with community-based interventions; (4) Building partnerships with public health organizations (for fact-checking, capacity building, community media and information literacy, research). Conclusions Many fact-checking organizations got involved in public health during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, they want to access more public health expertise, tools, and partnership modalities that would enable them a more sustainable effort in covering health topics, especially beyond infectious disease.