Measuring the unmeasurable: The real costs of health misinformation

Health misinformation poses a severe public health risk, leading to false conspiracy beliefs, vaccine hesitancy, treatment delays, and risking human life and wellbeing. In this regard this study reviewed five recent studies to clarify the financial and societal impacts of health misinformation specially on the individual level. The review concentrated on the collected data, analysis approaches, results, health misinformation impacts, countermeasures, and limitations suggested by the reviewed studies. The study attempts to highlight the countermeasures to health misinformation based on the approaches proposed by the reviewed studies, like enhancing science literacy, supporting reliable fact-checking, labeling misinformation online, modifying social media algorithms, and promoting widespread, accurate public health messaging. A potential research gap has been identified con­cerning the shortage of studies investigating the financial impact of health misinformation on indi­viduals, highlighting a possible area for future research.