An overwhelming amount of health information finds us daily, from social media influencers to attention-grabbing headlines. University of Alabama researcher Dr. Rebecca Ivic studies how health information spreads through various channels. Throughout her career, she has sought to understand what conditions allow reliable, evidence-based health information to reach people in meaningful ways.
Now, her research has put her at the front of an international effort to understand this very issue and to empower people to access quality health information.
Better information means better health
Ivic is executive editor of the Journal of Health Communication and the associate dean for research in the College of Communication and Information Sciences. Much of her work begins with a simple premise: people cannot act on health knowledge they cannot find, understand or trust.
Her research examines how health information moves through campaigns, digital platforms, social media and everyday conversations.
Ivic’s research program and her leadership in the field led to her inclusion in the first-ever commission from Nature Medicine, one of the world’s leading scientific journals.
The commission brings together experts working across health governance, social media, artificial intelligence and other areas that shape how people encounter health information. A new academic journal, Nature Health, launched this year to complement the commission’s work.
The first issue in early 2025 included a study, which Ivic co-authored, confirming that access to quality health information has a direct effect on public health around the world. With that in mind, the next steps are determining how to get the information to people in a way they trust.
Focus on positive health messaging
“We want to advance a globally positive agenda,” Ivic said. “We know misleading information is out there and it’s going to continue to be there. What can we do to counteract or correct that?”
One of the first steps toward that is a project Ivic leads to develop a set of health information indicators. These are practical measures that can help researchers, policymakers and organizations assess whether information is clear, credible, and useful. The effort draws on expert interviews, survey research and computational analyses of natural conversations about health on digital platforms.
UA students are involved throughout that process, contributing to research that will help test whether proposed indicators make sense not only in policy settings, but also in the places where people actually seek and share information.
The work also places UA in a visible leadership role. The University’s College of Communication and Information Sciences is one of three co-secretariat anchors for the commission, alongside partners at the City University of New York School of Public Health and the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp.
The UA Health Communication Summit
In May, Ivic helped organize the UA Health Communication and Information Summit, which brought together experts from UA and beyond. This was a seminal event intended to bolster health communication and build a foundation for collaboration across disciplines toward shared priorities.
UA researchers from social sciences, medicine, nursing, social work, information sciences, communication and public health attended, reflecting the breadth of UA expertise. Other institutions represented included CUNY School of Public Health, University of Utah, George Mason University, WebMD Ignite and several international institutions.
For Ivic, her role with the commission helps elevate UA’s position as a place where scholars and students can help shape national and global conversations about the future of trustworthy health information.