986 - "Information Sick"
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2025
⏱️ 21 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
About this episode:
The decline in journalism and the explosion of social media have converged to form an information crisis, with millions exposed to misleading and false information relevant to their health. In this episode: Joanne Kenen, Lymari Morales, and Josh Sharfstein—authors of a new book exploring this issue—talk about the diagnosis of "information sick," as well as its causes, symptoms, and solutions.
Guests:
Joanne Kenen is an experienced public health and health care journalist who has been the journalist in residence at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health since 2021.
Lymari Morales, MPP, is the Associate Dean of Communications and Marketing at the School of Public Health. She previously worked in communications leadership roles at The Atlantic and Gallup, and in national newsrooms.
Dr. Josh Sharfstein is distinguished professor of the practice in Health Policy and Management, a pediatrician, and former secretary of Maryland's Health Department.
Host:
Lindsay Smith Rogers, MA, is the producer of the Public Health On Call podcast, an editor for Expert Insights, and the director of content strategy for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Show links and related content:
-
Information Sick: How Journalism's Decline and Misinformation's Rise Are Harming Our Health—And What We Can Do About It—Johns Hopkins University Press
-
Panel Discussion Inspired by the Book "Information Sick"—Johns Hopkins University
-
A Playbook for Addressing Misinformation—Public Health On Call (March 2024)
Transcript information:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhh.edu. |
| 0:23.8 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:30.8 | It's Lindsay Smith Rogers. |
| 0:32.8 | Today, what do the declines in journalism have to do with mistrust around health? We have three guests on |
| 0:39.3 | today's episode, journalist Joanne Kenyon, Associate Dean of Communications at the Johns Hopkins |
| 0:44.6 | Bloomberg School of Public Health, Lamari Morales, and Public Health on Call co-host, Dr. Josh |
| 0:49.7 | Sarsstein, all co-authors of a new book, Information Sick, How Journalism's Decline and Misinformations |
| 0:56.6 | Rise are harming our health and what we can do about it. They join me to talk about what it |
| 1:01.4 | means to be information sick and how institutions, organizations, and individuals all play a role |
| 1:07.7 | in the treatment. Let's listen. Lamari Morales, Joanne Cannon, and Dr. Josh |
| 1:12.6 | Sharfstein, welcome to public health on call. We are so happy to have you. You are the authors of |
| 1:17.9 | this book, Information Sick, how journalism's decline and misinformation's rise are harming, our health, |
| 1:23.9 | and what we can do about it. To walk through this book, we want to start out with the idea |
| 1:29.9 | of information sick and that this is a diagnosis of society, of where we are, and that there are |
| 1:37.1 | some symptoms that led to this diagnosis. Josh, would you lead off with that? Sure. As the clinician |
| 1:43.5 | in the bunch here, I'll start with the diagnosis. |
| 1:46.1 | We think of information sick as a diagnosis both for individuals and for society. |
| 1:51.1 | So an individual is information sick when they are in a world of information and a sea of information that is not accurate and that is leading them to |
| 2:02.4 | make decisions that are actually harmful to their health or the health of their loved ones. |
| 2:07.1 | It could be someone who is declining to take a legitimate proven treatment for cancer because |
... |
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