Image Credit : Pinterest
Project Overview
We’re introducing a new experience for vaccine-related searches on Pinterest. Now, when you search for “measles,” “vaccine safety” and other related health terms, you can explore reliable results about immunizations from leading public health organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the WHO-established Vaccine Safety Net (VSN), a global network of websites providing reliable vaccine safety information in various languages.
Organisation
Project Context
More than 300 million people come to Pinterest every month to get inspired and find ideas, from easy weeknight meals to crafts to do with kids. We believe a healthy life is an inspired life, and today we have an update on our efforts to combat health misinformation.
Health misinformation is contagious ... Hesitancy around vaccines is one of this year’s top global health threats, according to the WHO.
The WHO recently announced that the UK, Albania, Czechia and Greece have lost their “measles-free” status, and the CDC confirmed that the U.S. is experiencing the greatest number of measles cases reported since 1992 and since the virus was declared eliminated in 2000.
Project Innovation
Last year, we made the decision to stop showing results for searches related to vaccines as a way to prevent people from encountering harmful health misinformation. This new search experience only shows content from leading public health institutions—you won’t see any recommendations or comments on Pins in these results. We also won’t show ads. We’re taking this approach because we believe that showing vaccine misinformation alongside resources from public health experts isn't responsible.
As we continue to tackle health misinformation, we remove it and the accounts that spread it from our service. But we also want to bring expert content onto Pinterest. We know we aren’t medical experts, which is why we’re working with professionals to inspire Pinners with reliable information about health.
With these authoritative Pins now in our system, they can also be discovered in home feed, related Pins and from the profiles of the WHO, VSN, CDC and AAP.
Since 2017 it’s been against our community guidelines to promote anti-vaccination advice and other health misinformation, and we’ve never allowed it to be advertised. We’ve long used guidance from these health institutions to inform our policy and how we enforce it, but we wanted to do more.
Health misinformation has the potential to impact public health, regardless of what service it’s found on. Allowing this content to spread through Pinterest’s search results is not in line with enforcing our community guidelines. That’s why we’re limiting search results to internationally recognized health organizations.
This new search experience is now available globally in English on the web and in our mobile apps for iPhone and Android. We look forward to continuing our work with health experts to expand authoritative results on other searches and in more languages.
Ultimately, we want to bring authoritative results to more Pinners in more places, because there’s nothing inspiring about harmful health misinformation.
Social and Community-Oriented Design - Digital
Social design applies a design methodology and intervention to tighten the social fabric that holds us together. Addressing issues of social inequality, such as poverty or social isolation, social design is the pathway to a more just and sustainable society. Community-oriented design is a human-centered and participatory design practice that emphasises the betterment of local communities through the improvement of public facilities, equipment, identity and experience.
The digital category celebrates design outcomes across digital platforms and includes motion design, front end and interaction design, user experience design and digital product design.
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