Published: ​February 22, 2019 | By ​Sydney Valentino
Irene Mussio (PhD), a postdoctoral fellow, works for the McMaster Decision Science Laboratory in the Department of Economics, delivered a research talk on:
Tackling misinformation regarding flu and flu vaccinations using social networks
Following are the summarized the take-home points of Irene’s talk…
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Seniors represent the most cases of death and hospitalization due to flu as well as the highest cost group for healthcare burden from flu.
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Irene tackles the problem of how misinformation and beliefs about the flu can be modified, using a low-cost strategy.
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The purpose of her research is to examine the impact of small scale interactions between peers on information about the flu and flu vaccination.
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By taking advantage of the high interaction amongst this group (which puts seniors at a higher risk for flu), she will study how information diffuses through social networks by first identifying and planting information with key individuals of each network.
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Irene is piloting her fieldwork in Uruguay before the flu season starts in the Northern hemisphere, where misconceptions about flu vaccinations are much more prominent.
Above is a photo of some of the original front end work of Irene’s “flu drive” conducted in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Please feel free to contact Irene Mussio (mussioi@mcmaster.ca) if you have any questions or would like to discuss future work.
This blog post was first published by the MIRA Trainee Network. Read the ​original article.​​
