The Public and Health (Mis)information: What Polling Tells Us about Where We’ve Been and Where We Might Be Going

In this research article released online by The Journal of Health Policy, Politics and Law, KFF’s Elizabeth Hamel, Alex Montero and Mollyann Brodie reflect on 30 years of public opinion data to offer perspectives on how the public accesses, evaluates, and uses health information, and what recent trends may suggest about the future of the health information (and misinformation) environment. The article examines public knowledge gaps on health and the role of partisanship in national health debates, how sources of health information have changed over time, declines in trust of information from government health agencies, and the current era of health information, including widespread uncertainty among the public and increasing use of social media and emergent technologies.