Elisabeth Wilhelm
Senior SBC Advisor in the Bureau for Global Health, USAID | Atlanta, Georgia
Project Overview
By adapting an existing participatory evaluation method of Most Significant Change, Elisabeth will design a toolkit to collect, analyze and interpret the experiences of people who have been addressing health misinformation and infodemic-related issues in the time of Covid-19 globally, with a focus on those working in health systems, front lines of health service delivery and health-focused civil society organizations. During a skill-building workshop on storytelling, among nearly 100 people working in infodemic management globally have chosen to share their stories as part of a storytelling project. In the coming months, Elisabeth will invite additional stories from around the world to ensure sufficient breadth and depth of experiences are represented.
For this project Elisabeth will work with a small group of infodemic managers to conduct an analysis that would help us identify common experiences, challenges, gaps, and opportunities of infodemic managers globally — and how health systems have changed and adapted through an infodemic that evolved as the coronavirus did. These insights will help us prepare for the next pandemic or emergency, where misinformation is rife and health outcomes hang in the balance.
Throughout this process, the toolkit will be refined with infodemic manager community feedback so that others may use the Most Significant Change approach to understand how an infodemic may be affecting a community in the future.
About Elisabeth
Elisabeth works at the intersection of public health, innovation, and behavior change, designing and testing strategies that promote behavior change at public health and global development agencies with a focus on low- and middle-income countries. In the time of Covid-19, she has pioneered the field of infodemic management with global health colleagues at US CDC, WHO and UNICEF to better diagnose and address information overload and misinformation that accompanies outbreaks and emergencies. She has led Covid-19 vaccine confidence efforts in the US and trained infodemic managers globally. Elisabeth is currently serving as Senior SBC Advisor in the Bureau for Global Health, USAID. She holds an MA in Communications from Johns Hopkins University and a BFA in Writing from Pratt Institute. She believes in the power of storytelling and centering communities in the business of public health for sustainable and healthy behavior change.