Essential health messaging tips for physicians [PODCAST]

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“Advocacy by moms is not new, but advocacy by physicians has been less common. Moms have been fierce advocates on a variety of causes ranging from Mothers Against Drunk Driving to Moms Demand Action, the anti-gun violence mom activist group led by Shannon Watts that has now helped launch moms into public office. As physician moms navigating a global pandemic, we are invested in ensuring that our patients, communities, and our children are safe. So, when misinformation threatens basic and effective public health measures, subsequently risking the health and safety of the public and of children, expect a wall of physician moms.”

Shikha Jain is a hematology-oncology physician who blogs at her self-titled site, Dr. Shikha Jain.  She can be reached on Twitter @ShikhaJainMD.

She shares her story and discusses the KevinMD article that she co-wrote, “Physician-moms fight back against anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers.”

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Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show, we have Shikha Jain. She’s a hematologist-oncologist, and she co-wrote the KevinMD article “Physician-moms fight back against anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers.” Shikha, welcome to the show.

Shikha Jain: Thank you so much for having me, Kevin.

Kevin Pho: So we’ll get into your article in a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and your journey to where you are today?

Shikha Jain: Absolutely. I am a hematology-oncology physician. I focus on communication strategies in medicine as well as digital innovation. I’m a mom of three young kids, and my journey to get here has been not traditional and not straight, as I’m sure is the case for many other physicians. I started off my career at the University of Chicago, where I did my college, and then I did med school at Michigan State, residency at the University of Illinois, and fellowship at Loyola. So I’ve been in multiple different locations.

I got really involved and interested in doing this kind of communication strategy work, and in doing things like writing for KevinMD, writing op-eds, and getting that messaging out there, because as I navigated through my health care career, I realized a lot of the information that we have isn’t really effectively disseminated to the population. My dad is a vascular surgeon, and one thing he is exceptional at is that he does a great job of explaining things to patients and also to community members. Throughout my entire life, I’ve seen him talk about things to our family in a simple way, and he’s been able to take very complex medical disorders and explain them in ways that people who don’t have our medical background are able to understand.

So for me, it’s a really big passion of mine to figure out how to make health care accessible and make evidence-based medicine accessible to our patients. I do that by writing op-eds, like for KevinMD. I do it by speaking out, doing interviews, and really trying to find ways to communicate the education that I’ve been fortunate enough to receive, and to communicate it in a way that is understandable for people who don’t have the same background.

Kevin Pho: I can’t emphasize how important that is, especially in the midst of a pandemic. I’m sure you’re aware of the studies showing that social media, and specifically Facebook, is the leading source of misinformation about the pandemic, and we certainly could use more improvement when it comes to public health messaging.

Shikha Jain: Absolutely, and especially as physicians in this space. With social media being so omnipresent, everybody has Facebook or Twitter or some type of social media that they get a lot of their news from. I strongly encourage my colleagues in health care to utilize their platforms to make their voices heard so that we can drown out, or try to drown out, some of this very coordinated misinformation messaging that goes out there.

I always tell my friends and colleagues that if we aren’t out there talking the truth, speaking the truth, and explaining and educating people, then the people who don’t have the background and knowledge will get the platform, and that’s what’s happened over the last several decades. So we as physicians really need to take this opportunity to educate the public and utilize the platforms where people are going, so places like social media and media in general.

Kevin Pho: Sure. So let’s get into the KevinMD article that you co-wrote, “Physician-moms fight back against anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers.” For those who haven’t read the article, can you walk my audience through it and share the story of why you decided to write it?

Shikha Jain: Absolutely. I’m fortunate in that in Illinois, we have wonderful government leaders who’ve been doing a pretty great job of using evidence-based medicine to navigate through this pandemic. At the beginning of the pandemic, several colleagues and I, Dr. Vineet Arora, Dr. Laura Zimmermann, Dr. E. Bloomgarden, Dr. Ali Khan, and Dr. Amisha Wallia, came together when we realized that all this misinformation was coming out there, and so we created this group called IMPACT, which has been about advocating and amplifying evidence-based messaging throughout this pandemic.

So fast-forward a few months, and we’re still living through a pandemic, and now we’re living through a second public health crisis, based on the fact that there have been egregious things that have happened throughout the nation. Black Lives Matter protests are happening, and public health crises are happening across the nation in the midst of a pandemic. Around the time of the protests happening, we saw this great news article about Portland moms who had come together to basically protect their communities and created this wall of moms. We saw the parallel between that type of advocacy work and some of the advocacy work that physician moms were doing across the nation, talking about anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers.

There was a rally that was actually scheduled here in Illinois, where a bunch of parents were planning on getting together to advocate against masks in indoor spaces and against masks for schools. So we thought it was really important to make sure that our voices were heard and to advocate for using science and evidence to continue to utilize masks indoors and continue social distancing.

One thing that we found in our research is that a lot of these anti-mask messaging initiatives that are happening are very similar to the anti-vax messaging that has happened, where people have been advocating against vaccines for years. We started to notice that the types of strategies the anti-vax groups were using were very similar to the strategies the anti-mask groups were using, and so we wanted to make that parallel. We wanted to educate people on, number one, why continuing to use masks and social distancing was important, and then also make sure that people understood that science is science, regardless of what you believe in. We as physician parents had multiple reasons to want to advocate for scientific evidence to navigate this pandemic, which includes encouraging people to get vaccines and encouraging people to wear masks when they’re out and about.

Kevin Pho: So in our current situation, unfortunately, science has been so politicized, and people are so ingrained in their positions already now, especially online on social media. Is there really any room for flexibility? Do you think that we can actually change minds on Facebook, for instance?

Shikha Jain: I think it depends on who your audience is. I always talk about three groups of people. There’s the one group who totally supports you. Anything you write, they say, “Yes, you’re so smart. Excellent job. We agree with you.” Then there’s that group in the middle, the fence-sitters, who aren’t really sure which way they believe. They’re reading articles on both sides, and they’re trying to figure out what they believe. And then there are those people who are completely against it. They are completely opposed, and no matter what you say, they’re not going to believe anything you say, and they’re going to throw facts and things back at you that are not accurate.

So what I tell people when they’re working on their messaging strategy is that you don’t need to focus on the people who already agree with you. You don’t really need to focus on the people whose minds you know you’re not going to change. The really important people to focus on are those people who are kind of in the middle. A strategy that I’ve used that has worked really well is using facts, science, studies, and papers to back up what I’m saying, because a lot of times, even myself as a physician, there are papers and articles that come out where I have to reread them and say, “Is this really factual? Is this really accurate?” And that’s with my decades of medical training and experience.

So for people who don’t have that experience, you need to be able to present both sides of the story, but then you need to back up your facts with evidence, science, and journals. By backing up the information that you’re presenting, you’re more likely to win over those people who are in the middle ground.

Kevin Pho: The majority of physicians aren’t as versed on social media as you are. So what kind of advice can you give to that clinician who may not be as familiar with Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook? Where can they start?

Shikha Jain: There are a lot of great resources out there. There are a lot of phenomenal physicians out there who are doing this exceptionally well. What I tell people who don’t know how to jump in is to find people who speak similarly to you and find people who believe things similar to you, and start following them. Start watching them. There are people like you out there. There are people like Dr. Dana Corriel, who has her SoMeDocs group. There are people like me who speak on misinformation and cancer. So I strongly recommend finding those people who are speaking to what you’re interested in and seeing what they do.

You don’t necessarily have to start putting tweets out or Facebook posts out right away. You can kind of gauge the water, see what other people are doing, and then do what feels comfortable to you. It could be just posting articles with maybe a little summary explaining what the article is about. It could be just sharing an experience that you had in clinic, obviously HIPAA-compliant, but saying, “I had this great conversation with a patient today, and I was able to convince them that getting a vaccine was a smart thing to do.” It could be as simple as taking a picture of a flower and saying, “We’re in a pandemic. It’s nice to stop and appreciate the little things.” So there are a lot of really great ways that you can kind of dip your toe in the water.

There are a lot of us out there who are willing to help as well. So many of us have our DMs open. You can send a message and say, “I’m interested in getting started. Do you have any advice?” There are a lot of podcasts out there as well that can help you navigate this very new environment that health care is now entering. But I strongly encourage physicians to utilize their platforms and utilize their voices to get out there, because really, it’s our community, and our community is a global community these days. We need to make sure we’re educating people so they use the best information to make the decisions they’re making.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Shikha Jain. She’s a hematologist-oncologist, and she co-wrote the KevinMD article “Physician-moms fight back against anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers.” Shikha, one thing that we’re finding out about the anti-vaccine movement is that those who are against them, they have some retribution. You hear stories about physicians who are facing a lot of pushback from people who don’t agree with them, especially online. What are some tips that you could share to deal with negativity, to deal with people who don’t agree with you online?

Shikha Jain: The great thing about social media is you can be as engaged or as little engaged as you want to be. So if it’s getting to be too much, I say take a social media holiday. If people are attacking you and you don’t want to deal with it, you don’t have to log in. That’s OK.

The way I try to deal with these types of things, because there are very coordinated attacks that happen, is that I categorize people who attack me into those three categories again. If there’s somebody whose mind I think I can change, and they’re speaking with facts, I try to engage and have a constructive discussion. If it’s a troll or somebody who is really just being negative and nasty and mean, what I’ll do is I may respond to one statement with just a factual article and say, “Thanks for posting. Here’s something that you might find interesting, based on my expertise.” And then if they continue to engage, I can block them. I can ignore them. You can mute them. There are lots of different ways. You can report them, depending on the platform you’re on.

I think one thing you have to be very careful about, and a lot of physicians have actually faced this, I know you’ve heard about it, is where physicians’ practices get phone calls or they get bad Yelp reviews. So you need to be aware, when you’re doing these types of things, that there is a possibility that that type of pushback might happen. So make sure your institution, your private practice, your group, whoever you’re working with, make sure that they are aware of what’s happening. Be in constant communication with them, because they can help you and provide assistance if something like that happens.

There’s a group that was formed called Shots Heard Round the World that specifically focuses on this particular issue. So if you are somebody who finds yourself targeted, I would recommend reaching out to that group. And the other thing that has been so amazing with these online forums and communities is that we have groups of physicians who will come to your rescue, so to speak. So if you’re in one of those physician Facebook groups, you can post something in there and say, “This is happening. Would you guys mind just responding and trying to drown out the noise, so to speak?” So that’s another really great way to utilize social media to try to help you. But I just want people to know that if you’re putting yourself out there, there is a risk that that’s going to happen. So you just need to go in with your eyes wide open and have a plan in place if something like that happens.

Kevin Pho: Now, despite what you say, despite what I say, there are still a lot of physicians who are still hesitant about going online. What are some non-online ways physicians can advocate?

Shikha Jain: There are a lot of great ways that you can advocate if you’re not online. Writing is a huge way you can do it: writing for KevinMD, writing other op-eds, writing for your local newspaper, your national news, writing for other publications. I think that’s one really great way that physicians can get their voices out there without needing to be online.

A lot of physicians we’re seeing in the news these days. There are some phenomenal docs, like Dr. Megan Ranney, Dr. Esther Choo, and Dr. Dara Kass, who have been all over CNN. So I recommend that if you have that platform, if you have the ability to be on TV and you’re comfortable doing that, or radio, doing your local or national news stations is a really great way to disseminate information. Contacting your newspaper: They are always interested in these types of stories, especially as you go through this pandemic. I think that a lot of newspapers and media outlets are looking for physician voices and looking for voices in health care to share not only their own experiences but their expertise. So I would strongly recommend reaching out, maybe outside of your comfort zone and something you never thought you’d be doing, but right now is the best time to get health care voices out there spreading evidence-based information.

Kevin Pho: And my final question: Do you have a take-home message that you want to share with the KevinMD audience?

Shikha Jain: To everybody who is listening and watching and who reads KevinMD: First of all, thank you, Kevin, for creating such a wonderful forum for people in health care to really communicate and disseminate information. I think it’s a wonderful resource.

To everybody else out there, please, please use your voice for good. There’s so much good that we can do in the health care world. There is so much that we are able to change. We think that our voices don’t matter, and we think that the things that we do don’t actually impact change. I can tell you that with the things that I’ve been doing over the last six months, I’ve had people reach out to me and tell me specifically how they have actually implemented change, utilizing the physician voices that we amplify. So I strongly encourage you to use your voice for the greater good. Think of the community as your global community, and get out there and spread evidence-based science and medicine as we navigate through this absolutely crazy time we’re going through.

Kevin Pho: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for sharing your inspiring words. Thanks again for being on the show.

Shikha Jain: Thank you so much for having me.

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