What Role Should The WHO Play In Regulating Digital Health Access And Information?

"Should the World Health Organization (WHO) intervene on social networks and other organic platforms that are providing health information? And, if so, how?

These were pressing questions raised on Tuesday during a webinar presented by the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute Geneva in coordination with the Digital Health and Rights Project.

Project researchers and participants presented their findings from a transnational participatory action research study into young adults’ experiences with digital health in Bangladesh, Colombia, Ghana, Kenya and Vietnam, raising important questions around the role that the organized health community can play in regulating organic digital health content.

They also offered policy recommendations and good practices to help challenge structural inequalities and meet the needs of young people in their diversity based on the results of their work.

Tabitha Ha, an advocacy manager for STOPAIDS, called on WHO to update its definition of digital health to include Google and social networks as digital health platforms, which could then enable the organization to evaluate the health content on these platforms and support local health agencies doing the same.

But Ha cautioned that while there is a need for collective approaches to managing health data on the world wide web: “If an institution like WHO was to come in, how would that change the dynamics? It could potentially influence the way people use social media to create this type of [health] content.”..." Lire la suite