IFC Keynote Address: "Truth and Evidence: Public Communication and Science in the Era of Misinformation"

The Institute for Freedom and Community’s Science Communications Conference will feature a keynote address by Kasisomayajula Viswanath titled Truth and Evidence: Public Communication and Science in the Era of Misinformation. His talk will begin at 4 p.m. on April 25 in Tomson Hall 280. It will be streamed online.

Viswanath is the Lee Kum Kee Professor of Health Communication in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and in the McGraw-Patterson Center for Population Sciences at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He serves as the director of several programs and centers at both institutions. The central goal of his work is to influence public health policy and practice through knowledge translation. His work draws from literature in communication science; social epidemiology, dissemination, and implementation; and social and health behavior sciences.

An award-winning researcher and mentor, Viswanath has written more than 300 journal articles, book chapters, and books. He has served on national committees for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). Viswanath is currently the chair of NASEM’s Consensus Study Committee on Understanding and Addressing Science Misinformation, a member of the Standing Committee on Advancement of Science Communication, and a member of the Planning Committee on the Public Health Infodemic and Trust in Public Health as a National Security Threat.