The partnership between PAHO and Meta facilitates the availability of reliable, evidence-based health information
The collaboration harnesses the power of digital tools to combat misinformation, especially during COVID-19.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has been partnering with Meta to promote credible public health information to audiences in the Region of the Americas. The collaboration has ranged from facilitating PAHO’s broad dissemination of reliable and timely information on COVID-19 and vaccines to strengthening PAHO’s visibility on popular platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Meta builds technologies that help people connect and build communities. With its global reach across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp, Meta enables health organizations like PAHO to share information and resources on health and helps health professionals support each other and the communities they serve through digital tools.
Expanding access to accurate health information through digital tools
Meta and PAHO work together to increase the impact of health communication and outreach efforts across Latin America and the Caribbean.
The collaboration has included activities to expand health content reach and engagement on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, enhance impact measurement for existing health messaging campaigns, and refine content and campaign monitoring tools.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the global need to access evidence-based health information increased to an unprecedented scale. To tackle this challenge, public health organizations like PAHO turned to popular digital platforms to expand their voice and reach large audiences around the globe.
PAHO’s content is included in Meta’s COVID-19 Information Center (CIC), which aggregates timely guidance, accurate information, and resources in Spanish and Portuguese from trusted health organizations for users across Latin America and the Caribbean. The CIC, available on Facebook and Instagram, is "a central hub for reliable, localized, and up-to-date COVID-19 information.
PAHO has run more than 49 health-focused ad campaigns on Meta’s family of apps with a median reach of 32 million people per campaign across the region with accurate information on a range of health topics.
PAHO has also used Meta’s technologies to fight misinformation on COVID-19, among other health areas, by promoting messages via notifications and ads on Facebook to dispel myths and provide accurate information. One of these campaigns focused on warning people not to take antibiotics or medications that were not effective or approved to treat COVID-19. This month-long ad campaign on Facebook and Instagram reached over 4.5 million people in Bolivia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and El Salvador.
Together, PAHO and Meta are sharing expertise to maximize the use of digital tools to improve the health of people across the region, identifying opportunities to scale up the availability of accurate health information in Latin America and the Caribbean.