Health Misinformation and Trust

This volume addresses rising distrust in food safety, shifts in social media content moderation, and the trend of self-diagnosis and treatment based on social media videos.

This volume explores false claims suggesting abortions occur after birth, misleading narratives around the safety abortion pills, like mifepristone, and other tactics used to distort the safety of abortions. It also explores research on the acceptance of health misinformation and the proliferation of AI-generated fake news sites.

This volume explores politically motivated misinformation targeting gender-affirming care, transgender people, and its impact on online discourse, legislation, and health care access. We also examine Florida Surgeon General Ladapo’s recent misleading claims about mRNA vaccines and new technology that can predict if social media users will share disinformation.

This edition looks at how political rhetoric is driving misinformation about fentanyl and immigration, legal implications of fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills sold on social media, and myths about opioid exposure.

In his latest column, KFF President and CEO Drew Altman explains the impact of misinformation about immigrants, examining the challenges of correcting misinformation shared by candidates or potentially amplifying it.

With the 2024 election season underway, a large majority of the public reports hearing false claims about immigrants from candidates or elected officials, and many immigrants say Donald Trump’s rhetoric in particular is negatively affecting how they are treated. This poll finding also gauges understanding about U.S. immigrants’ eligibility for government benefits programs.

With immigration and border security getting attention heading into November’s elections, a large majority of the public reports hearing false claims about immigrants from candidates or elected officials, and many immigrants say the rhetoric is negatively affecting how they are treated, a new KFF Health Misinformation Tracking Poll finds. Fielded…

This edition highlights vaccine hesitancy and misinformation around MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccines as children return to school and measles cases resurge in parts of the U.S. It also examines emerging narratives around COVID-19 vaccine misinformation following the FDA approval of COVID-19 boosters and false claims linking mpox to the vaccines.

In this issue, we take a closer look at the reliability of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots as a source of health information. We explore public opinion on chatbot accuracy based on KFF surveys and highlight recent examples of AI-generated election misinformation in the news. In addition, we share our firsthand experience querying AI chatbots on health topics and discuss research on gaps in safeguards.

KFF’s Health Misinformation Tracking Poll finds that while most adults say they have interacted with artificial intelligence (AI), most are not confident that these chatbots provide accurate health information. Most of the public, and half of AI users, are not confident they can tell whether information from AI chatbots is true or false