Califf to News Media: Benefit the Public Health
Speaking on 2/14 at the National Press Club, FDA commissioner Robert Califf challenged journalists to “continue striving for approaches that benefit public health in the best possible manner.” Saying he wanted to bring some Valentine’s Day “tough love” to the audience, Califf spoke on his pressing theme of healthcare disinformation and misinformation.
“What you publish, the words you use, and who you quote to provide context and authority has tremendous implications for every issue you discuss,” he declared, “perhaps nowhere more than the area in which I spend most of my waking hours — public health and the choices of individual people, health professionals, patients, and consumers, in their health behavior.”
He cited the current decline in life expectancy in the U.S., and the known factors causing the decline, and said the way information is conveyed to consumers and patients through the media and other sources about the issue and the factors causing it, and what individuals and society can do to reverse it, directly affects the nation’s health.
He also referred to the ongoing controversy over Covid vaccinations as an example of how information presentation can have a negative impact on people’s lives.
“With over a billion doses of these life-saving vaccines administered, the scientific evidence presented in countless studies has demonstrated the safety of these vaccines as well as the dramatic reduction in the risk of death, hospitalization, and serious illness afforded by them,” he said…. “Yet the ongoing proliferation of misinformation and disinformation about these facts, and the failure to provide adequate and continued attention to the clear risk reduction provided by these vaccines, has resulted in a distorted view in the population about Covid vaccination and this incorrect perception has led to lower vaccine uptake. This is now ‘spilling over’ into the general vaccination issue, as evidenced by the recent reemergence of measles.”
Calling it an example of a situation where the focus on the sensational took precedence on this topic, Califf described recent media reports around the world on Florida surgeon general Joseph Ladapo calling for a halt to Covid vaccines. “It was a splashy news story, easy to report, and filled with conflict, albeit unmerited,” Califf said. He said there was much less media attention a few weeks before when the agency publicly shared a letter sent to Ladapo outlining the implausibility of his position and presenting the scientific assessments that gave FDA confidence in the quality, safety, and effectiveness of the vaccines. “No drama,” Califf said, “just facts. Not surprisingly, only one or two reporters wrote about it then.”
He acknowledged the importance of the public understanding a range of views to help inform their own opinion, but said that too often “the panoply of stories to which people are exposed causes them to lose sight of the underlying issues that would enable them to live longer free of hospitalization and disability.”
He called on the media to recognize that most surgeons general and health officials in other states strongly support Covid vaccinations and said that fact could also have been reported. He urged journalists to fight the trend of “bothsideism” or “false balance” in their reporting.