EPH Conference statement commitment 3 & 4: ““We champion transparent, participatory policymaking that places health and well-being at the centre and empowers communities to shape their environments.
In an age of misinformation, we are committed to evidence-based communication, listening to genuine concerns, and protecting public discourse from manipulation.”
Protecting health depends not only on effective services, but also on how decisions are made. WHO Europe has long emphasised that governance is a determinant of health, highlighting the importance of transparency, accountability, and whole-of-society approaches in shaping fair and effective policies (Kickbusch & Gleicher, 2012). Strong governance strengthens trust, supports policy coherence, and enables collaboration across sectors.
In parallel, the information environment has changed substantially. Digital platforms, algorithms and AI tools and agents increasingly influence how people interpret health information, scientific uncertainty, and public health recommendations. The European Union has taken steps to strengthen information integrity through transparent and accountability requirements for online platforms, including the strengthened Code of Conduct on Disinformation and the European Democracy Shield (European Commission, 2025). While the introduced measures improve monitoring, reporting and transparency requirements, more should be done to resolve upstream drivers of misinformation’s impact on society.
Public (health) institutions, governments and scientific communities depend on public trust. Perceptions of vaccines, prevention strategies and other public health measures can be influenced by false and misleading information, especially where the communication does not meet the people’s concerns and lived realities. WHO defined infodemics as a structural public health challenge requiring more than just corrective messaging, but strengthened risk communication systems, transparency, and community engagement (World Health Organization, 2022).
Participation of communities is perceived as a key to legitimacy and trust. The WHO handbook on social participation for universal health coverage emphasises that voice, agency, and empowerment are essential components of legitimate and sustainable health systems (World Health Organization, 2021). When communities are meaningfully involved in decision-making, policies are more responsive, equitable, and grounded in lived experience.
Recent scholarship further argues that trust cannot be restored through fact-checking or a shift in risk communication alone, but requires a relational approach. They describe ‘trust as a verb’, something built through everyday interactions, visible reasoning, and respectful engagement with lived experience. Trust grows when institutions listen, acknowledge uncertainty, explain how decisions are made, and create space for shared dialogues (Purnat et al., 2026). Public health actors & health-care professionals are not the ones to redesign the platforms, but they are key to ensuring trust is strengthened via continuity of care, locally accessible high-quality information and consistent and continuous communication that recognises patients arrive embedded in their complex information system (Winters et al., 2025).
From local to global level, let us know how you tackle the challenges on trust, governance, mis- and disinformation and stronger engagement of community & lived experiences in public health.