Elena Petelos

University of Crete, Social medicine, Faculty Member

Maastricht University, Faculty of Health Medicine and Life sciences, Health Services Research, Department Member

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https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Elena_Petelos

https://www.linkedin.com/in/elena-petelos-9b67644/
Supervisors: Silvia Evers and Christos Lionis
Phone: +442071932250

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Rakesh Biswas

University Of Kolkata

Naim Kapucu

University of Central Florida

Ronald Labonte

University of Ottawa | Université d'Ottawa

António B. Moniz

Universidade Nova de Lisboa

David Seamon

Kansas State University

Remo Caponi

University of Cologne

Zackary Berger

Johns Hopkins University

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Giulia Sissa

Ucla

Stephen Yablo

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

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Papers by Elena Petelos

Inclusion of functional measures and frailty in the development and evaluation of medicines for older adults

The Lancet Healthy Longevity, Nov 30, 2023

Infodemic management challenges and evidence-based midwifery

European Journal of Midwifery

What is an infodemic and how does it affect evidence-based midwifery? The World Health Organizati... more What is an infodemic and how does it affect evidence-based midwifery? The World Health Organization (WHO) defines an infodemic as an overwhelming amount of information, including misinformation and disinformation, that can circulate during acute events, making it hard for people to identify trustworthy sources and reliable guidance 1. However, infodemics can, also, interfere with health-seeking behaviors and evidencebased practice at any time, affecting women and their families across communities, including in the context of seeking routine sexual and reproductive healthcare 2. Today, midwives can help protect their health by identifying the best possible evidence for new technologies and combating the infodemic in the context of evidence-based midwifery practice. Most people, and certainly women of child-bearing potential, pregnant women, and young mothers, now, search for health information through mobile devices and through their social networks online and offline, even if they still consider healthcare professionals as their most trusted sources of health information, and midwives as their most trusted partner in the perinatal period. Infodemic management challenges are complex, systemic, and hard to quantify for midwives, because the quality of information, including the level of evidence, available on reproductive health, fertility and pregnancy is heterogeneous. Low quality information and misinformation is readily available and appealing to women of child-bearing potential, which can successfully compete against the evidence-based advice a midwife may provide 3,4. Identifying the best available evidence may also pose concrete challenges for midwives, with evidence from clinical trials often being extremely limited when it comes to women of child-bearing potential, pregnant women, lactating women, etc.; a key limiting aspect in both in terms of the autonomy of women and of the practice of midwives, as it became starkly clear during the COVID-19 pandemic 5. Furthermore, midwives need to learn how to navigate an increasingly digitized information environment for themselves and the women they serve, and to help them and other community health actors deepen their engagement with communities. Given the digital divide experienced across many communities, midwives need to both navigate the infodemic, as experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the post-COVID-19 era, and to bridge this divide along with the women, the families, and the communities they support, picking up new digital and infodemic management skills 6. There is, therefore, a need to define and establish the role of midwives in infodemic management and to equip them for it by developing and deploying appropriate, effective and efficient capacity-building strategies and tools. An emerging challenge, for example, relates to ability to utilize digital technology to access, understand and use health information effectively for themselves and their clients. Midwives' role extends from identifying evidence for evidence-based practice, to dissemination of information, to improving acceptance and adherence as part of health promotion and prevention activities, and for treatment too, and across a wide range of technologies, i.e. vaccines, to digital diagnostics and therapeutics, etc. Because midwives take a relational rather than a transactional approach to community engagement, including specific field actions like postnatal home visiting, they are well suited to using infodemic management approaches effectively and efficiently at the interpersonal and community levels.

Elena Petelos

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