health

This Doctor Is At War With Medical Hoax By Recruiting An Army of Health Experts

Chiang is using social media to counter hoax.

Published on June 4, 2019

Everyone hates hoax because they confuse people and can cause chaos when nothing has actually happened. The same thing is happening with health as people are posting articles explaining how a single vegetable can cure everything or how vaccines cause autism (it’s been debunked numerous times).

But because social media has integrated into our lives, it’s so easy for fake information to be shared, causing widespread confusion.

Meet Austin Chiang whose role is to make sure that people are not becoming their own doctors with the wrong information. He’s the first Chief Medical Social Media officer in a popular hospital.

Chiang is a Harvard graduate in gastroenterologist and aside from that, he is also an avid social media user, owning an Instagram account with over 20,000 followers. The GI Doctor, or how Chiang likes to refer himself as, always emphasize on facts, case studies and journals before making claims on anything.

Here’s an example of Chiang’s fight against the anti-vaccine community:

View this post on Instagram

#DontGoViral 😷 _ ☑️ When it comes to prevention, I want to see receipts. I DEMAND facts from well-designed studies and not the rumor mill. 🙏 I’m joining a some colleagues today to discuss the importance of vaccines. So far in 2019, there have been some highly-publicized outbreaks stemming from unvaccinated communities leading to a total of 206 individual cases across 11 states (as of Feb. 28, per @cdcgov), with 71 currently in Washington state. Keep in mind measles was supposedly eradicated in 2000 here in the US. At the Tuesday Senate committee hearing, the government was urged to develop campaigns to address anti-vaccine messages, so rather than wait, here we are. 📢 _ 💉 Like ANY other intervention (even vitamins or health supplements), there are risks. However, rare risks need to be weighed against the benefit as well as the risk of not having being immunized. Millions of deaths have been prevented from vaccines. Of course, nothing is ever 100% foolproof but what also worries me is that misinformation today about vaccines, could easily be targeted toward another lifesaving treatment smeared into oblivion. _ 🦠 On the other hand, some risks are erroneously attributed. Resources that could have gone to finding the next cure (in addition to illness caused by unvaccinated individuals) have thus been diverted to reinvestigating the past. Recently yet another study put forth in @annalsofim showed in 657,461 children born in Denmark from 1999 through 31 December 2010, that findings strongly supports NO increased risk of autism with the MMR vaccine (hazard ratio 0.93; 95% CI, 0.85-1.02). _ 👨🏻‍💻 The idea that social media is partly at fault has led to actions taken by YouTube and Facebook for limiting support of anti-vaccine misinformation. But as a @nytimes piece points out today, this is not enough. The true power will be in our ensuring appropriate legislation is passed to protect our health interests as a populace. _ 🙌 Tagging other health leaders for their insight too! . . . #spreadFACTSnotmeasles #facts #vaccineswork #measles #vaccines #immunize #wellness #health #safety #prevention #outbreak #publichealth #measles

A post shared by Austin C. MD MPH 。 GI Doctor (@austinchiangmd) on Mar 6, 2019 at 8:38am PST

“This is the biggest crisis we have right now in health care. Everyone should be out there, but I realize I’m one of the few,” says Chiang when asked abot what he does.

The world has people fixated on social media and what’s trending, no matter if that’s right or wrong. This mass movement towards one-cure-for-all solutions as well as inconvenient movements of not vaccinating themselves are dangerous. So much more so because these content are gaining popularity in the face of quality content backed with facts.

Yet, medical experts cannot spare more time in letting content creator dominate the most visited place on earth with medical hoax. Chiang made his move by recruiting certified physicians, nurses, doctors and health professionals to get online and drown out the hoaxes.

Chiang got this role after a series of conversation with CEO Stephen Klasko of health system. Klasko himself is an active social media user who’s straightforward in his delivery.

One hashtag Chiang has been using is #verifyhealthcare and #dontgoviral to prevent the spread of anti-vaxxer. With measles case increasing to a number that has never seen before since 2000, Klasko and Chiang are working with 3,000 other doctors to get online and educate users who typically age under 35.