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ABSTRACT
‘Trust is among the most important factors in human life, as it pervades’ all domains of society [Citation1] and related decision-making processes. This includes people’s trust in science, and in clinical and public health solutions. Unequivocally, community and patient trust are foundational to the adoption and maintenance of health-related behaviors, social norms, and policies. Yet, trust has to be earned and developed over time and through multiple interactions. Trust is about dialogue and human connection. It’s about listening and knowing that one interaction will not be enough to build trust. It is also influenced by a variety of social, economic, cultural, and political factors, past experiences, and the history of specific communities and patient groups. It should be at the core of the health and social systems with which people interact. More recently, trust in evidence-based information has also been affected by misinformation, not only on social media but also in a variety of community, institutional, and patient settings. Ultimately, we are in the midst of a global trust crisis that precedes the COVID-19 pandemic and is often rooted in the health, racial, and social inequities many groups experience [Citation2].
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Melody Harris and Zoe Cross of Taylor & Francis for their support of The Science of Trust Initiative at the Journal. Special thanks also to the Journal’s Summer 2022 Communication, Technology and Social Media interns: Mary Kelly Allen, for her support in proofing the original transcript of the roundtable discussion, and Gloria Zucchini who will work on disseminating the discussion and recommendations in this roundtable proceedings.
Disclosure statement
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose. No funds supported this roundtable discussion and proceedings. The opinions in this article are those of the authors only and do not necessarily represent the official position of the organizations with which the authors are affiliated.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Renata Schiavo
Moderator and Roundtable Chair/Organizer
Renata Schiavo, PhD, MA, CCL is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Communication in Healthcare: Strategies, Media, and Engagement in Global Health. A passionate advocate for health equity, she is a Senior Lecturer at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Sociomedical Sciences, the Founder and Board President of Health Equity Initiative, a nonprofit membership organization, and a Principal at Strategies for Equity and Communication Impact, a global consultancy. Her areas of expertise include epidemics, emerging disease outbreaks and other public health emergencies; health inequities; maternal and child health; immunization; vaccine hesitancy; and building trust in science. She has published extensively on health and risk communication, global health, community-based interventions, and health equity.
Gil Eyal
Participant
Gil Eyal is Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, where he also is Director of the Trust Project within INCITE (Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics). He is the author, most recently, of The Crisis of Expertise (Polity 2019). Among his previous books were The Autism Matrix (Polity 2010) and The Disenchantment of the Orient. (SUP 2006). During 2020–2022, he organized at Columbia a Mellon–Sawyer Seminar on trust and mistrust in science and experts, and also taught an undergraduate course on the same topic.
Rafael Obregon
Participant
Rafael Obregon, PhD is the UNICEF Country Representative in Paraguay since July 2019. Prior, he led UNICEF’s Communication for Development Section globally, was an Associate Professor at Ohio University, and worked as Regional Health Communication Specialist for the WHO/PAHO. He has supported several responses to humanitarian situations and to public health emergencies and disease outbreaks, including the 2014–2015 West Africa Ebola Outbreak and the 2016 Zika outbreak. He has published extensively on global health communication and outbreak response. Dr Obregon serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Communication in Healthcare: Strategies, Media, and Engagement in Global Health.
Sandra C. Quinn
Participant
Sandra Crouse Quinn is Professor and Chair of the Department of Family Science and Senior Associate Director, Maryland Center for Health Equity, School of Public Health, University of Maryland. She has been the PI on CDC, NIH, FDA and foundation grants focused on trust, vaccine acceptance and disparities, and communication. She is currently the Chair of the Planning Committee for a 2022 NASEM Workshop, Building Public Trust in Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Science.
Helen Riess
Participant
Helen Riess is a clinical and research psychiatrist, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Empathy Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr Riess founded Empathetics, an organization that provides empathy education for healthcare and law enforcement. She is Author, The Empathy Effect and the TEDx ‘The power of Empathy TEDX’. Dr Riess and her teams are dedicated to transforming organizational systems into compassionate care systems. Her research has been published in leading medical journals and has won numerous awards.
Nikita Boston-Fisher
Co-Organizer
Nikita Boston-Fisher, MPH, PMP is the Senior Editorial Assistant for the Journal of Communication in Healthcare: Strategies, Media, and Engagement in Global Health. She is passionate about health equity and communication. Nikita is a Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES) and has over a decade of project management experience. She founded and hosts a podcast called The Good Health Café, the place to understand health and healthcare in plain language. She works in the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University.