U of A, EPL team up to tackle viral health-care misinformation
The University of Alberta (U of A) and the Edmonton Public Library (EPL) have announced a groundbreaking new partnership designed to combat the rising tide of viral health-care misinformation that has swept across digital platforms and into the everyday lives of Edmontonians. The collaboration, which draws on the academic expertise of the university’s Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry and the community-based reach of the city’s public library network, aims to equip residents with the critical thinking skills necessary to navigate an increasingly complex and often misleading health information landscape. Officials from both institutions framed the initiative as a necessary public health intervention, noting that the proliferation of falsehoods on social media, messaging apps, and even well-intentioned websites has made it harder than ever for ordinary citizens to distinguish evidence-based medical advice from dangerous pseudoscience. By bringing together U of A researchers, health sciences students, and librarians, the program creates a unique front-line defense that situates public libraries as trusted sanctuaries for health information.
The partnership comes at a time when the consequences of health misinformation have never been more pronounced, with public health experts pointing to widespread vaccine hesitancy, the misuse of unproven treatments, and the erosion of trust in medical institutions as direct results of a digitally amplified infodemic. According to a recent survey conducted by the Canadian Public Health Association, some 87 percent of Canadians report encountering health misinformation online, while more than half admit to having acted on information that they later discovered to be false. The pandemic exacerbated the problem, but the issue is far from new—from the anti-vaccination movement to the promotion of colloidal silver and other miracle cures, the modern age has always had a pocket of the population susceptible to dubious medical claims. What has changed, however, is the scale and speed at which falsehoods spread, accelerated by social media algorithms that prioritize engagement over accuracy. The U of A and EPL collaboration directly addresses this troubling shift, positioning the public library system as a key pillar in the fight to restore a common, evidence-based understanding of health.
At the heart of the new initiative is a series of embedded workshops, drop-in clinics, digital literacy programs, and a co-developed resource hub that librarians will be trained to use in their daily interactions with the public. Dubbed the Health Information Literacy & Education (HILT) program, the project will see U of A graduate students from nursing, public health, and library and information studies work alongside EPL staff to host sessions on topics ranging from understanding clinical trials and reading a scientific paper to recognizing logical fallacies in health-related advertising. Perhaps most importantly, the program will provide one-on-one consultations, where Edmonton residents can bring claims they have seen online—whether it is a viral TikTok video advising viewers to self-medicate with livestock dewormer or a Facebook post warning of a hidden government vaccine conspiracy—and receive, in real-time, a thoughtful, evidence-based evaluation from a reliable expert. Library staff, who are often first responders to informational distress, will also receive specialized training on how to pivot from frequently asked questions to broader teachings about evaluating sources without alienating patrons or invalidating their concerns.
The genesis of the partnership can be traced back to 2023, when a repository of health claims curated by the U of A’s School of Public Health was made available to the EPL for a limited pilot project. That tentative cooperation generated remarkable traction, leading the two institutions to formally consolidate their resources and develop a more structured program. Dr. Grace O’Shea, a professor of health policy and a leading voice in the field of scientific communication, has been instrumental in shaping HILT’s curriculum. She described the core challenge not as a lack of facts, but as a surge of information overload that leaves people vulnerable to shortcuts and emotional reasoning. “The scientific method is not intuitive; it has to be taught,” O’Shea noted in the report on the initiative. “Our job is not to shame people for believing misinformation, but to build structural support so that when they feel uncertain, they know they can come to a safe, neutral place—the public library—and get information they can trust.” This sentiment echoes a wider scholarly consensus that the medical community’s traditional methods of correcting misinformation—such as long-form rebuttals and data-heavy myth-busting—are often less effective than providing accessible, engaging alternatives.
For the Edmonton Public Library, which operates 21 branches across the city and serves over 840,000 cardholders, the initiative represents a natural evolution of its civic mission. EPL Chief Librarian Rachel Wu emphasized that the project is not about making staff medical professionals, but about ensuring that the library remains a place where knowledge is democratized and questions are welcomed. “(We) have seen the rise of anti-science sentiment within our own communities,” Wu said during the announcement at the downtown branch. “People come in wearing masks, asking if they should be concerned about a new study they’ve read; others come in carrying print-outs of too-good-to-be-true cures. The pandemic taught us that people trust librarians—so we have a responsibility to treat that trust with the utmost care.” To that end, EPL will host a year-long calendar of programming, including a guest-speaker series featuring U of A medical faculty, monthly ‘Myth-Busting Cafés,’ and a traveling exhibit that uses interactive displays to teach visitors about the history of medical misinformation, from the early 20th-century patent medicine trade to modern conspiracy theories.
Local residents have already begun to feel the positive impact of the collaboration. In the first month of pilot programming held in several high-needs neighborhoods, HILT sessions drew capacity crowds, with many attendees reporting a sense of relief at having a reliable resource close to home. For Anthony Nguyen, a father of two who attended one of the workshops, the program offered a lifeline. “I kept seeing things on Instagram about how melatonin was a cure-all, and I almost gave it to my kids every night based on that,” Nguyen told a local reporter. “I’m a smart guy, but when you get sucked into that algorithm, it’s hard to find your way out. I’m just glad there’s a place I can go to ask for help without feeling stupid.” This kind of feedback points toward the potential for programs like HILT to be replicated in other Canadian cities, particularly those with strong public library infrastructure. As the partnership matures, organizers plan to publish a toolkit and best-practice guide, while continuing to evaluate the program’s effectiveness through frequent user surveys and academic research. The ultimate goal, according to University of Alberta president and vice-chancellor Dr. Jasmine Patel, is not merely to debunk the latest falsehoods, but to foster a durable “wellness skepticism” that survives the next public health emergency. “We can’t police every post on the internet, but we can, as a community, build up our collective immunity to the harmful effects of the infodemic,” Patel stated. “By teaming up with the Edmonton Public Library, we are bringing the university’s resources to the kitchen tables of this city. That is what it means to be a truly community-engaged institution—meeting people where they are, and giving them the tools to make informed decisions for themselves and their families.”