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.
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.​​