- On its 30th anniversary, the National Association of Health Informers (ANIS) organizes its first international meeting with other professionals from the United States, Latin America and Europe.
- Graziella Almendral, president of the association: “We want to design a roadmap to fight together against misinformation on particularly sensitive health issues”.
- Misinformation is one of the issues of greatest concern to health reporters around the world.
The Granada Health Technology Park will host the first edition of ‘BioMed&Tech Talks’: Your appointment with research and innovation, a new independent, transversal, international and multidisciplinary event that from April 8 to 11, 2024, coinciding with the World Health Week, will give visibility to innovative projects in BioMedicine and BioTechnology.
Coinciding with the celebration of BM&TTalks, the National Association of Health Informers (ANIS) will take advantage of this new framework provided by BM&TTalks to hold, on its 30th anniversary, the first international meeting with directors of national and international health and science communication associations – from the United States, Latin America and Europe – after which they will present a manifesto of a strategy to fight disinformation.
“Despite the general recognition that health misinformation causes enormous impact and harm to the population, not enough action is being taken to combat it,” says Graziella Almendral, president of ANIS. “This international meeting will allow us to design a roadmap within health and science journalism to fight together against disinformation and misinformation in such sensitive areas as climate change and health, immunization or health emergencies,” says Graziella Almendral, president of the association.
In addition, ANIS intends to “vindicate the role of specialized journalism and the importance of having trained professionals in all areas where information is produced and disseminated as one of the main tools against disinformation”.
One of the main concerns of this association is the treatment of “health information”, since “it is especially sensitive and affects vulnerable populations”. For Graziella Almendral, “despite the general recognition that health disinformation can, in certain contexts, reach ‘infodemic’ proportions and cause enormous impact and harm to the population, not enough action is being taken to combat it“.
The meeting will be attended by Megan Miller, Head of Health at InterNews Network in the USA -an organization that supports media in more than 100 countries-; Fabiola Torres, Director of Salud con Lupa in Latin America; Lucas Sánchez, Vice-President of the Spanish Association of Science Communicators (AEC2); and Gema Lloret, President of ComunicaBiotec, the Association of Biotechnology Communicators and Ljubica Latinovic, Community Protection Strategies Officer, World Health Organization (WHO).
The National Association of Health Informers (ANIS) has more than 700 members from all the media and health institutions in Spain and 2024 is a special year, as it celebrates three decades since its birth.
Innovative format for a high-level event
BM&TTalks is supported by the Fundación Progreso y Salud (FPS), of the Consejería de Salud y Consumo de la Junta de Andalucía.
Its agenda will include two face-to-face sessions (April 8 and 9) and two virtual sessions (April 10 and 11). An ideal format, as it allows speakers who cannot travel to Granada to share their advances and messages with the whole community, which raises the academic level of this event to the maximum, which is held to coincide with World Health Day, on Sunday, April 7.
All BM&TTalks presentations can be followed through ‘The Observatory’, the digital platform of Medina Media Events, where all interventions will be available 24/365 for on-demand consumption, like Netflix, but free of charge.