Roles for Health Care Professionals in Addressing Patient-Held Misinformation Beyond Fact Correction.

Dr. Brian Southwell is an adjunct professor with Duke's Department of Medicine and also has worked with the Social Science Research Institute and the Energy Initiative. Southwell directs the Science in the Public Sphere program at RTI International and also is a faculty member at UNC-Chapel Hill. He hosts The Measure of Everyday Life, a weekly public radio show, is the author of Social Networks and Popular Understanding of Science and Health (Johns Hopkins University Press), and edited Innovations in Home Energy Use: A Sourcebook (RTI Press) and Misinformation and Mass Audiences (University of Texas Press).

I received my B.S. in Biochemistry and M.S. in Genetics both from Clemson University and my Ph.D. in Biology from The University of Mississippi. My dissertation work focused on gene regulation in Drosophila melanogaster, specifically genes that regulate how neurons and glia become different from each other. In 2016 I began a postdoc in Medical Education with Duke School of Medicine, specifically working with the Master of Biomedical Sciences program. I continue to teach these students as well as first year medical students in my role as Assistant Professor of the Practice of Medical Education. My current research interests focus on best practices to prepare medical students to encounter medical misinformation in the clinical setting and best practices and strategies to mitigate medical misinformation among the general public.