Accurate Health Information Doesn't Compete in a Vacuum

Written By Kevin Cevasco

Someone can avoid your health and wellness messages but they can’t avoid health information altogether.

Actively seeking health information from multiple sources can help people compare what they hear, judge whether it is accurate, and develop a broader or deeper understanding of a health issue. Rather than relying on a single source, people can use different sources to answer different questions and make more informed health decisions (Ahn & Kahlor, 2020).

However, health decisions don't begin with an employer’s benefits portal, a doctor’s office, or a public health campaign.

People passively encounter health information through search engine results, social media feeds, podcasts, news coverage, influencers, online communities, friends, family, coworkers, and algorithmically selected content (Ecker et al., 2022; Mikell, 2024; Mikell & Powell, 2025). A person’s passive exposure to this health information, along with social norms, can shape their health information-seeking behavior (Kim et al., 2020; Liu et al., 2022).

A person who chooses not to engage with an evidence-based health information source does not leave the health information environment.

That creates an important asymmetry:

People can intentionally reduce their exposure to evidence-based information while remaining exposed to information that reaches them incidentally.

A health communications campaign is not communicating with a blank slate. Its audience may already have established beliefs about the risk, intervention, healthcare system, or messenger before the first health campaign message arrives (Mikell & Powell, 2025; Pennycook et al., 2018).

Avoiding health information does not create an information vacuum

Many people at higher objective health risk are overly optimistic about their risk, which can lead them to avoid seeking more information. For example, contrary to expectations, a person’s higher perceived COVID-19 susceptibility predicted avoiding health information (Zhao & Liu, 2021).

Hence, someone at higher health risk may not read your wellness portal page about an important health concern but still encounter anecdotes on social media. They may ignore an employer's prevention email but hear about the same intervention from friends. They may decide not to search for health information while a social media algorithm continues selecting health-related content for them.

During these passive information exposures, misinformation can leave people feeling they already know enough about a health issue (Kim et al., 2020). When that happens, they are more likely to avoid additional information, rely on quick judgments, and spend less effort evaluating new information.

This makes understanding an audience’s external information environment relevant to health-campaign design.

What has shaped your audience before your message arrives?

For organizations designing health programs, that suggests a different starting point.

Before asking:

What should our message say?

Consider asking:

What information environment will our message enter?

That raises a different set of questions for campaign designers:

  • What are people already hearing before our message reaches them?

  • What do different psychographic groups already believe about their risk and the effectiveness of the recommended action?

  • What does our audience believe people like them are doing, or expect them to do?

  • Where did those beliefs come from?

  • Whom do they trust?

  • What information are they actively seeking, avoiding, or simply encountering?

  • And could some of the people we describe as “information avoidant” believe that they already know enough?

We know increasingly more about why people avoid health information. What is harder to find is a practical playbook that helps health-program managers distinguish among different forms of information-avoidant behavior and design campaigns accordingly. Evidence about potential approaches exists, but much of it remains scattered across disciplines, theories, contexts, and intervention studies rather than translated into guidance that program managers can readily use.

The opportunity may therefore be broader than finding better ways to deliver health information to people who are not seeking it. It is to understand the beliefs they bring to the campaign, and the information environment that may have already shaped those beliefs.

References

Ahn, J., & Kahlor, L. A. (2020). No Regrets When It Comes to Your Health: Anticipated Regret, Subjective Norms, Information Insufficiency and Intent to Seek Health Information from Multiple  Sources. Health Communication, 35(10), 1295–1302. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2019.1626535

Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Schmid, P., Fazio, L. K., Brashier, N., Kendeou, P., Vraga, E. K., & Amazeen, M. A. (2022). The psychological drivers of misinformation belief and its resistance to correction. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1(1), 13–29. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-021-00006-y

Kim, H. K., Ahn, J., Atkinson, L., & Kahlor, L. A. (2020). Effects of COVID-19 Misinformation on Information Seeking, Avoidance, and Processing: A Multicountry Comparative Study. Science Communication, 42(5), 586–615. https://doi.org/10.1177/1075547020959670

Liu, Z., Yang, J. Z., & Feeley, T. H. (2022). Reduced Risk Information Seeking Model (RISK): A Meta-Analysis. Science Communication, 44(6), 787–813. https://doi.org/10.1177/10755470221144453

Mikell, J. (2024). The Illusory Implication Effect: How Mere Exposure to Ideas Influences Our Beliefs [M.S., Arizona State University]. https://www.proquest.com/docview/3050136870/abstract/E2BFBB4284DE4214PQ/1

Mikell, J., & Powell, D. (2025). Illusory implications: Incidental exposure to ideas can induce beliefs. Royal Society Open Science, 12(1), 240716. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.240716

Pennycook, G., Cannon, T. D., & Rand, D. G. (2018). Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(12), 1865–1880. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000465

Zhao, S., & Liu, Y. (2021). The More Insufficient, the More Avoidance? Cognitive and Affective Factors that Relates to Information Behaviours in Acute Risks. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 730068. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.730068

Kevin Cevasco