MARCH 21, 2024
Amanda Yarnell
Senior Director, Center for Health Communication
Lecturer, Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
About the Presentation: The $16 billion influencer marketing industry is often seen as churning out viral videos exclusively for profit. Now imagine if we used that same playbook to disseminate evidence-based public health information. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Health Communication is connecting creators with public health evidence in a bid to do just that. By deploying its Public Health Creators program as a field experiment on TikTok, the Center has identified simple, cost-effective, and creator-led interventions that can be deployed at scale to influence health content on such platforms. Join us to discuss how “influencing the influencers” might improve health information ecosystems on social media and even influence the health beliefs and behaviors of social media users.
About the Presenter: Amanda (she/her) is the senior director of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Health Communication.
Under Amanda’s leadership the Center launched its Public Health Creators program, which equips and inspires influential creators to spread evidence-based health information on social media. Her Harvard Chan team is also conducting interdisciplinary, creator-engaged research to study how creators are reshaping health narratives and behaviors.
Amanda is also a lecturer in the Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences, where she is preparing public health students to credibly communicate health information in an increasingly skeptical and fragmented world.
In her work at the Center Amanda leverages two decades of experience in science and health journalism, media product development, and audience engagement. Before joining Harvard’s faculty, Amanda worked as a science journalist and newsroom leader at C&EN, an award-winning nonprofit science news outlet. She currently serves on the board of Science To People, a nonprofit developing an AI research assistant for creators. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University and a Masters of Science in Chemistry from MIT.