Dear Pandemic: COVID-19 Science Communication
Project lead: Dr Jennifer dowd
Associate Professor of Demography and Population Health, Senior Research Fellow
Department of Sociology
Project Summary
Dear Pandemic is a social media COVID-19 science communication effort initially launched by several female scientists, “Those Nerdy Girls,” to inform concerned family and friends. It has grown to a reach of over a million a month over several social media platforms as a way to curate and interpret evidence-based COVID-19 information and combat the high volume of circulating misinformation. While younger adults are important drivers of SARS-CoV-2 spread, only a small percentage of Dear Pandemic followers are currently under the age of 30. To both protect the long-term health of young adults and minimize the risk of spill over transmission from younger to older groups, this younger demographic is an important target of COVID-19 prevention messaging. This project will fill an important gap and provide young adults a trusted source of curated COVID-19 information to inform their own risk-reduction, as well as empower them with the knowledge to amplify accurate messages and combat misinformation in their own social networks. The ultimate goal is to reduce individual and community-wide COVID-19 transmission and health risk.
Project Updates
We will be posting updates as the project gets started.