Scottish Health Information Integrity Strategy

Summary of Recommendations

The recommendations in this strategy are grouped around three pillars. These pillars are described in more detail on pages 22-30. Detailed recommendations and the institutions leading on these can be found on pages 31-35.

Pillar One – Leadership and Coordination: Embedding the lessons learned from the response to false health information during the COVID-19 pandemic requires visible leadership and coordination. Institutions dealing with false health information must allocate resources, with work embedded into existing systems and practices.

• Provide dedicated resources to address false health information in the Scottish Government and partner health institutions.
• Embed harm mitigation against false health information into governance structures in Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland and NHS Scotland.
• Provide an adaptable template for other government areas that are affected by false health information.
• Participate in academic and institutional networks in the UK and internationally to gain insight, share learning and ensure that our response is shaped by the latest evidence.

Pillar Two – Building Scotland’s Resilience to False Health Information: Building Scotland’s resilience to false health information requires ongoing efforts to increase individuals’ and communities’ abilities to safely navigate the health information landscape both off- and online. Work arising from this strategy must complement established programmes while seeking out new opportunities in education and health. This includes supporting healthcare professionals to sensitively manage interactions with a patient who may have been influenced by false information, and to further embed digital, media and health literacy skills into primary and secondary education.

• Help support NHS staff to gain the knowledge and skills to have evidence-based conversations with patients and to sensitively navigate situations that have been influenced by false health information.
• Develop an evidence-based communications toolkit for health institutions to empower them and their staff to address false health information in their local context.
• Build on partnerships with community leaders across the third sector and communities of faith to extend reach of accurate information and add further trusted voices to communication and engagement with communities.
• Support ongoing efforts to embed media, digital and health literacy into the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence.
• Work to build robust links with professional health and social care education with the aim of promoting training on false health information.
• Explore development of resources to build the public’s media, digital and health literacy related to false health information while supporting existing efforts already underway in Scotland.
• Ensure robust monitoring and evaluation of all interventions arising from this strategy.

Pillar Three – Rapid Response to False Health Information: Information travels fast; false information even more so. To ensure that the right information reaches the right audiences, our systems must be agile and responsive enough to understand the false narratives are circulating in communities and online. They must also be able to rapidly respond where needed in a safe, justifiable and empathetic manner. Building on the latest evidence, planning and implementation must be underway before another major public health emergency occurs.

• Explore the development of processes to understand the online and offline information landscape using publicly available data, feedback from clinical staff and community input.
• Develop a code of practice which sets out the key principles of an institutional response to false health information in Scotland.
• Build a risk assessment framework to prioritise the harmful narratives which require action, adapted from established and evidence-based guidance.
• Establish scalable rapid response protocols for use during future public health emergencies.
• Continue to engage with community partners and third sector organisations to ensure broad dissemination of public health messaging in communities.