Communicating science to enhance public health

Advances in technology, nutrition, genetics, and mental healthcare require high-quality information to protect people’s rights, guide decisions, and expand access to care

Moura Leite Netto

Representation of DNA and other molecules with an image alluding to the human body

Science is related to public health in many ways, from the regulation of algorithms used to diagnose diseases to what we eat; from the prevention of psychological suffering to the incorporation of advanced gene therapies.

This broad intersection was addressed in the Science Communication for Communicators and Journalists course, delivered from September 1 to November 3 at the University of São Paulo (USP) by the School of Communications and Arts (ECA), the Department of Social Communication (SCS), and the Institute of Advanced Studies (IEA).

As a participant in this course, which included various classes and areas of expertise, I decided to analyze five classes given by guest professors.

It was a narrative choice guided by the central idea of the opening lecture, delivered by linguist Carlos Vogt: The Spiral of Scientific Culture. When science circulates and becomes a part of the culture, it saves lives.

Thus, discussing this spiral with a focus on science communication, artificial intelligence (AI), healthy eating, genetics, and mental health also means discussing what sustains or weakens the health of a population.

Vogt, a professor emeritus at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), explained that science only fulfills its true potential when it can represent its own social communication processes, and when it becomes a “much stronger form of social and cultural presence.”

A society’s health depends on much more than emergency rooms, medications, and diagnostic tools. It begins with information that guides choices, prevents risks, reduces inequality, and allows us to understand the technologies that are increasingly determining our lives.

Scientific culture

According to Vogt, “one of the fundamental traits of the society we live in is the constant, strong, and persistent presence of science.” That presence, however, only translates into well-being when it becomes part of the culture; when the population understands its meaning.

Without communication, Vogt reminds us, there is no science. After all, communication is the foundation for the development of a scientific culture.

He explains that the spiral of scientific culture—which allows us to understand its trajectory—arose from efforts to organize, systematize, and visualize science communication from various perspectives, incorporating a vision in which communication becomes a structural element of the contemporary world, “capturing the transformations that the whole world has undergone, with scientific knowledge playing a fundamental role.”

This understanding is even more urgent in light of the technological acceleration explored by Glauco Arbix, a professor at the USP Department of Sociology, in his class: Challenges of Artificial Intelligence in the Twenty-First Century.

He emphasized that artificial intelligence is here to stay, for better or for worse. “The most reasonable thing to do is embrace AI and leave our own mark on it,” argues the professor, noting that nowhere is free of the technology, not even digital media platforms or banking systems.

In healthcare, where “people’s lives may be at stake,” the technological integration struggles against the opaqueness of the systems. Arbix highlighted this very problem, commenting that the computational mechanisms behind diagnoses and medical decisions are not understandable to those who depend on them.

Contemporary challenges

Carlos Monteiro, from USP’s Center for Epidemiological Research in Nutrition and Health (NUPENS), addressed a more mundane—yet equally essential—aspect of day-to-day public health: the revolution of ultra-processed foods as a battle for information, in a class entitled Nutritional Information, Food Choices, and Public Health.

For Monteiro, what defines health is dietary habits, because “we do not eat nutrients or isolated ingredients. We eat meals, and combinations of foods.”

The problem, according to his research, is that modern life has eroded the autonomy of our decision making. “Until recently, choosing the right foods was not a major problem. That changed with modernity and ultra-processed products,” says the professor.

In Advances in Genetics and their Impact on Contemporary Society, Mayana Zatz, a professor of genetics and evolutionary biology at USP, highlighted a study she conducted involving over 100,000 people from families with genetic diseases. The project, she explained, enabled prevention, diagnosis, and genetic counseling. “These patients are the protagonists of knowledge. They give rise to new discoveries, and these new discoveries help them and other patients,” she says.

Zatz also highlighted key moments in the timeline of genetics, including recent revolutions such as the cloning of Dolly the sheep, the Human Genome Project, stem cell reprogramming, and Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR), which enables precision DNA editing.

Looking to the future, the geneticist anticipates that “precision medicine will lead to healthy aging, cell therapy, tissue bioengineering, and new ethical challenges related to AI.”

In this context, communication is essential to ensuring that scientific advancement does not deepen inequalities and that innovation serves as a treatment, not as a privilege.

The final class in my analysis was Psychological Crisis in Contemporary Society, given by Christian Dunker, of USP’s Institute of Psychology. Dunker argued that “we live in an anti-grief society that does not like death or collectively processing loss.”

When discomfort is missing from language and relationships, he explains, our suffering itself becomes an illness. “When our narratives of suffering are poor or we cannot articulate our pain, the banal becomes a clinical symptom,” says the psychoanalyst.

Dunker also notes that “we have abandoned practices of psychic recomposition, such as collective mourning and forms of education that embrace subjectivity.”

Five classes, each with their own theme, share a common message: communication is an integral part of good science and a healthy life.

Informing is not about simply transmitting data. It is enabling conscious food choices. It is explaining the risks and benefits of technologies that are already deciding lives. It is democratizing genetic advances that are reshaping the future. It is protecting people who suffer in silence, giving their pain a name and a meaning.

In a world where misinformation spreads faster than any medication, communicating science with rigor, empathy, and responsibility is like a cultural vaccine against manipulation and injustice.

The USP course provides a link between journalism, science, and health by promoting education. The health of the future, whether physical, emotional, or genetic, will be shaped not only in laboratories, but in spaces where knowledge transforms into culture.

To achieve that, we have to go beyond the university walls with commitment and intention, to truly break through the elitist bubble. We have to enter newsrooms, schools, social media, community gatherings, and everyone’s daily lives.

Communicating science is a social commitment.

Moura Leite Netto is a journalist who earned his bachelor’s degree from UNIFIEO, a postgraduate diploma from Faculdade Cásper Líbero, and a master’s and PhD in sciences with an emphasis in oncology from A. C. Camargo Cancer Center. He is currently doing postdoctoral research at the School of Dentistry of the University of São Paulo (FOUSP), where he is also a visiting professor. He is the director/founder of SENSU Comunicação and former president of the Brazilian Network of Science Journalists and Communicators (RedeComCiência).

Opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of Science Arena or Einstein Hospital Israelita.

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