Medical Students Learn to Fight Health Misinformation Through New Communications Curriculum

Medical students spend years mastering anatomy, pharmacology, and clinical reasoning, yet most graduate with almost no formal training in one of the most consequential skills of modern medicine: communicating health information to the public through mass media. A new study published in BMC Medical Education suggests that a relatively modest curricular intervention can meaningfully change that picture. Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School designed and evaluated a seven-hour mass communications curricular thread for third- and fourth-year medical students, delivered across five optional sessions, and found that it significantly improved students’ self-reported comfort, interest, and perceived ability in areas ranging from social media professionalism to working with journalists.

The motivation for the project is grounded in a striking disconnect. Doctors are among the most trusted voices in society and are well positioned to counter the health misinformation that circulates widely online, yet medical curricula have historically treated mass communication much like other medical humanities topics, as an afterthought rather than a core competency. The study’s authors note that medical students often do not know the existing professional guidelines governing public-facing communication, and roughly 30 percent self-report having already posted unprofessional content on social media. In other words, future physicians are already participating in the digital public sphere, frequently without the training to do so safely or effectively.

The scale of that participation is one of the most eye-opening findings from the survey data. Between August 2020 and January 2023, 1,500 third- and fourth-year medical students enrolled in the curricular thread, and 830 participants completed at least one survey. Among these respondents, 97.7 percent reported using social media personally, and 31.4 percent reported using it professionally. Despite this near-universal personal engagement, students signaled low familiarity with the fundamentals of mass communication, including how to identify misinformation, how to serve as a reliable source for journalists, and how to advocate effectively in legislative settings.

The curricular thread itself was designed to address those gaps directly. Its five optional sessions covered the dos and don’ts of social media use, identifying bias and misinformation, being a good source for the media, legislative advocacy, and meetings with expert physician communicators who have built public-facing careers. By bringing students into contact with doctors who actively engage with the public, the program aimed to model what effective digital health communication looks like in practice, not merely in theory. The seven total hours of instruction were deliberately woven into the existing medical school schedule as a thread rather than a standalone course, reflecting the reality that curricular space in medical education is scarce and contested.

Methodologically, the study relied on pre- and post-session surveys using five-point modified Likert scale questions. These instruments assessed students’ media use, comfort, interest, perceived importance, and self-reported abilities in medical mass communications. The researchers compared responses before and after each session using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, and tracked changes longitudinally using Wilcoxon rank-sum or Kruskal-Wallis tests. This quantitative approach allowed the team to detect whether observed gains were statistically meaningful rather than merely anecdotal, and whether they endured beyond the immediate afterglow of a single teaching session.

The results were consistent and encouraging. After each session, students showed statistically significant gains in comfort and self-reported ability in the targeted skills being taught. More importantly for the long-term value of the intervention, these gains persisted in several areas when measured six months after session completion. Students also expressed significantly greater comfort engaging in social media in a professional capacity, and in three of the four sessions evaluated, they reported a greater likelihood of using mass communication in their future medical practice. For a seven-hour investment spread across optional sessions, those durable shifts in attitude and confidence represent a notable return.

The findings arrive at a moment when the information environment surrounding medicine has never been more fraught. Public health crises, vaccine debates, and the rapid spread of health misperceptions on social platforms have made it clear that scientific accuracy alone does not guarantee public understanding. Misinformation thrives in the vacuum left by absent or inaccessible expert voices. The study’s authors argue that doctors, by virtue of their training and public trust, are uniquely positioned to fill that vacuum, but only if they possess the communication skills and confidence to engage. Traditional medical education, with its emphasis on one-on-one clinical communication, has not equipped graduates for broadcasting, interviewing, or navigating viral misinformation.

What makes the University of Minnesota model particularly interesting is its recognition that communication is a teachable craft with identifiable components. A student who learns how to identify bias and misinformation is acquiring a different skill from one who learns how to be a good source for a journalist, and both differ from the skills needed for legislative advocacy. By breaking mass communication into discrete, assessable competencies and measuring each one, the researchers treated public communication with the same rigor that medical educators apply to procedural or diagnostic skills. The significant pre-to-post improvements in each targeted area suggest that this decomposition is pedagogically sound.

The study is not without limitations, and the authors are candid about them. The outcomes measured are self-reported perceptions of comfort, ability, and interest rather than objective assessments of actual communication behavior. A student may feel more confident about engaging with journalists without necessarily producing higher-quality media contributions. The sessions were optional, which raises the possibility that participants were already more interested in communication than their peers, potentially limiting generalizability. The authors explicitly call for further studies assessing actual behavior to determine whether integrating training in creating, interpreting, and using mass communication into medical education genuinely strengthens future clinicians’ ability to disseminate effective, high-quality health information.

Even with those caveats, the implications for medical education are substantial. If nearly all medical students are already on social media, and nearly a third are using it professionally, then the question is not whether physicians will participate in mass communication but whether they will do it well. Roughly 30 percent of students admitting to past unprofessional postings underscores the risks of leaving that participation untrained. A curricular thread of just seven hours, embedded across five sessions and requiring no major restructuring of the medical school calendar, produced measurable and partially durable gains in the very competencies that protect both patients and physicians in the digital sphere. As medical schools grapple with how to prepare graduates for an information ecosystem where a single post can reach millions, this study offers a concrete, evaluated, and reproducible template for turning medical students into effective digital health communicators.

Subject of Research: A mass communications curricular thread for medical students to improve digital health communication skills

Article Title: Developing effective digital health communicators via a mass communications curricular thread for medical students: a quantitative survey

Article References: Johns, C. N., Tessier, K. M., Gladding, S., Scheurer, J. M., Rahman, Z. I., McKinney, Z. J., & Krohn, K. M. (2026). Developing effective digital health communicators via a mass communications curricular thread for medical students: a quantitative survey. BMC Medical Education. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-026-10232-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12909-026-10232-8

Keywords: medical education, health communication, misinformation, social media, curriculum, medical students, mass communication, digital health, professionalism, media training, infodemiology, public engagement