By: Austin Weynand, MHS
On August 2nd, Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff visited UTMB to learn about
the many ongoing One Health research endeavors conducted by its faculty and staff, and brought with her a particular interest in infectious disease. She is an experienced and award-winning NPR correspondent who has reported on a range of health topics,
from international maternal health to the 2014 West Africa Ebolavirus epidemic. Her journalistic background, paired with an extensive scientific education, has her equipped to both engage in, and relate to others, pertinent matters of disease and
the One Health framework.
Her passion for science relations has motivated her to create a forthcoming podcast, which will focus on the concept of One Health and emerging infectious diseases. With this tool she hopes to continue something she has already done through NPR –
engaging the public on developing matters of health.
“If you’re not communicating effectively to the public, it’s like you’re not communicating,” Dr. Doucleff offers. She explains that many scientists are not efficiently trained in how to talk to the public, which is a detriment
to academia at present. Some scientists will seek to learn this skill on their own, but not all. The ones that do, she states, end up “writing the best papers, [ones] that are more highly cited and accepted.” Most importantly, they can
share evolving research accurately and honestly.
Dr. Doucleff uses the COVID-19 pandemic as a recent example. Communication of peer-reviewed knowledge on the virus was often inconsistent, incomplete, or inaccurate. She explains that many people were told simplistic versions of the truth, which, although
intended to encourage public health compliance, underestimated the intelligence of the public. “People are smarter than that, and deserve to know the truth, even if that is ‘we don’t know yet,’” she states. “Gaps
in the knowledge create mistrust and suspicion.”
Examples of these gaps in knowledge include the COVID-19 vaccines: how long protection would last, how much they would reduce viral transmission, and how effective they would be in a real-world scenario (i.e., outside the confines of a randomized controlled
trial). Many people were under the impression that the arrival of vaccines implied the pandemic must be over. The truth, as Dr. Doucleff explains, was much more nuanced, as we have seen with waning vaccine-induced immunity and emerging SARS-CoV-2
variants.1,2 She is a firm believer that people are smart enough to hear about these uncertain futures, and deserving of it.
Connecting with the public is itself an evolving field. Outside of the mainstream news media, people listen to podcasts, check social media, and ask their friends.3 Dr. Doucleff believes the “tsunami of news” people have been forced
to absorb is resulting in some backlash, which may make individuals turn to more constricted sources, such as newsletters and the ever-relevant podcast. Another paradigm shift has been the fusion of public health and politics – a phenomenon
which Dr. Doucleff feels has damaged effective public health outreach. But direct communication between scientists and laypeople, with a focus on honest, complete information, may help to repair recent erosions in trust.
- Lin, D.-Y., Gu, Y., Wheeler, B., Young, H., Holloway, S., Sunny, S.-K., Moore, Z., & Zeng, D. (2022). Effectiveness of Covid-19 Vaccines over a 9-Month Period in North Carolina. New England Journal of Medicine, 386(10), 933–941.
https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2117128
- Subissi, L., von Gottberg, A., Thukral, L., Worp, N., Oude Munnink, B. B., Rathore, S., Abu-Raddad, L. J., Aguilera, X., Alm, E., Archer, B. N., Attar Cohen, H., Barakat, A., Barclay, W. S., Bhiman, J. N., Caly, L., Chand, M., Chen, M., Cullinane,
A., de Oliveira, T., … Agrawal, A. (2022). An early warning system for emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. Nature Medicine, 28(6), 1110–1115. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-01836-w
- Shearer, E. (n.d.). More than eight-in-ten Americans get news from digital devices. Pew Research Center. Retrieved August 14, 2022, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/12/more-than-eight-in-ten-americans-get-news-from-digital-devices/
- Techer | From Earworms to Ebola. (2017). Retrieved August 23, 2022, from https://www.alumni.caltech.edu/techer/michaeleen-doucleff