Sexual Health (Mis)information

This transcript is the automated English captions in the recordings. The text may not align with the audio and there may be errors the transcript.

Tom Lee: Hello everyone. My name is Tom Lee and I'm a policy analyst with the public health agency of Canada. Thank you for joining the communicable diseases and infection control webinar series. 

We are pleased to have you join us for today's webinar. As we join together virtually, I want to recognize the importance of the lands on which we each find ourselves. From coast to coast to coast, we acknowledge we are on the traditional lands of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.  

Let us collectively honor and cherish the spirit of reciprocity, cultivating a shared commitment to the respect and care of these lands for generations to come. 

A few notes for today's webinar. Today's webinar includes content from those external to the agency which may not reflect the views of the public health agency of Canada. 

Following today's event, a copy of the presentation decks and recording as well as a feedback form will be sent to you. We greatly appreciate your feedback. Today's webinar will be conducted in English. 

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Note, you may check send anonymously if you do not want your name attached to your questions in the Q&A. I will now introduce our speakers for today's webinar.  

Sophie Nadeau is the Vice President of CMA Media, an initiative of the Canadian Medical Association designed to fight false health information and to support Canadian physicians as they navigate the relationship patients have with online information. 

Andrew Townsend is a Health Promotion Officer with Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights, based in Toronto, Ontario - covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit. He oversees Action Canada's Youth STBBI Testing Awareness campaign, which you can learn more about at onceayear.ca. Andrew will also moderate the Q&A section for today’s webinar.  

Najma Kahiye is Registered Nurse (RN), and the Manager of Toronto Public Health’s Sexual Health Promotion Program. Prior to assuming this role, Najma held progressively senior roles at both the City of Toronto and the Government of Ontario. She also has extensive frontline experience and has worked in various roles and capacities – as a nurse, nurse psychotherapist, Caseworker, and most notably as a Counsellor at the Sexual Health Infoline Ontario (SHILO) – to support individuals, families, and communities. 

With that, I will turn over to Sophie to begin her presentation.  

Sophie Nadeau: Thank you so much and what a pleasure it is to be here. as Tom explained, I lead a project with the Canadian medical association that's trying to help people basically understand Canada's relationship to health information, protect people from false health information, protect trust in experts in, you know, public health and physicians who are experts in the field. 

And this webinar is so well timed because we just released the 2026 health and media tracking survey yesterday, you may have seen it in the news, and so I'm really pleased because I'll be able to take you through our research in addition to some additional insights that weren't shared in the public launch yesterday. 

So I can share that with you today. I'm very much your big picture person on the panel today and I try to help you understand basically what the state of play is in the information environment in Canada and what leading communicators are trying to do to make a difference. before I get into the deck, one last sort of plug is my team actually runs the fastest growing health information content project in Canada called Healthcare for Real or and what that is is a website and also social media video channels trying to connect Canadians with trusted information in the health system to understand the lives of doctors and to fight misinformation. 

So, if I can ask all of you to like, follow, share, you know, all that obnoxious stuff on our channels too, we'd really take the help. But for now, let me just go to the deck and take you through the results. so we do have the results in French available on English and that's one of the leading research firms in Canada. 

We've been working with them for the last 3 years. This year we increased our sample size to 5,000 Canadians so that we could actually offer provincial dashboards and a better sort of sense of scope. Right. 

So we track things against demo. I feel like it's one of the most it's one of the biggest samples on this particular topic and the only research of its kind in Canada. Though I will say that we have you know smart colleagues at PHAC and in other organizations who are doing adjacent and complimentary work and we all talk to each other which is very fun because all the data geeks love trading notes and I hope that today's research also inspires you in your work and how perhaps you can use the data to adjust your strategic perspective. 

So let's start with the big picture here. So again we've been tracking this for three years. The bad news is, you know, misinformation is now just a normal part of life. 

64% of Canadians up two points over last year say that, you know, they continue to encounter it. It's pervasive and the the speed with which this has happened is quite stunning. They just think about where we were a decade ago and where we are today. 

It's just sometimes, you know, if I stop to think about it, it just makes my head spin. How did we get here? Well, there's a number of reasons why, which we can talk about today. 

But the fact of the matter is this is our reality now. And when you look at the experience of misinformation, again, this is the big picture. demographically, young people are more exposed to misinformation. 

And again, the correlation there is because they spend more time on social media. But look at that baby boomer number on the right hand of the slide. This is no longer a young person's problem. 

This is an everybody problem. And you know, the folks at Advocacy expect these numbers in the older generations will catch up as we continue to track year-over-year. So tr exposure to misinformation largely the same over the last year slightly growing but what is changing substantially is the trust that people have in specific information sources. 

So look at this the numbers trust numbers for American news organizations can Canadian news organizations provincial health orgs all down trust in social media as a channel all down and I'll be showing you in the appendix of this deck with a bit more granularity exactly what these trust numbers look like so stay tuned that's the stuff we didn't share yesterday what is not changing is trust in doctors so which is a wild thing to me because we've seen like 10 12 point drops in doctor trust in the US because of the Trump administration sort of directed attacks at doctors in the US and yet here in Canada people are resolved they trust their doctors and by the way they also trust nurses and pharmacists and I'm going to show you that list later but that's good news and they also trust their family so if you're in public health communications that's a very important note generally when it comes to where trust moves our experience and again I used to work at Edelman I ran the Edelman trust barometer  

local trust is personal. Trust is with the person that's right in front of you. It's no longer institutional, right? 

So, gone are the days where, you know, we could say, "Hey, we're important. We're an organization like the Canadian Medical Association. You must listen to us” and then get that trust, you know, just organically. 

That doesn't work anymore. In fact, people look to other humans, other experts to help them along in their health journey. We added a new question this year on US health information. I mean, how could we not, right? 

And again, the news here is not good. Canadians are worried. They're worried about the increase of health misinformation from our American colleagues. 

They're also worried about the available access to good quality information. Remember, the US used to be a health leader globally. we would turn to the CDC and other US organizations to help us understand the world of public health and this has all come apart in so many ways. 

in our event yesterday, we had Dr. Tom Frieden join us by phone from New York. He's the former head of the CDC under the Obama administration. 

And you we asked him like should we be worried? He's like yes 100%. This is a huge problem. 

So the other thing that we we noted here is that this concern actually has a direct correlation to decrease of trust in news media here in Canada. So there's no border for this stuff, right guys? like the idea that we're isolated from the information trends in the US is just is just not the case. 

Like we are in the same swimming pool and we should be thinking about that as we develop communication strategies to protect Canadians. here's the thing though, we have an access to care problem in Canada and if you can't get a doctor or you can't get into a team based care or see a healthcare provider, you're going to go online. And our research supports this that most people do. 

They go online. They go online to get information about a health condition or tips on managing chronic conditions or access to you know information about the system or you know reviews about physicians understanding insurance. So so listen you know this is done right like people are online. 

So the question isn't how do we get them offline because the system can't actually support them the way that they need. The question is okay how do we meet them where they need the information online and of course many of us are trying but you know this is where the war will be won it's online and we asked this year why they're going online and perhaps this won't surprise you if you've ever had a health condition yourself and you're sitting on your couch and you don't quite know what to do about it. the impulse is to go search on your phone and and that's what people tell us you know it's faster to go online it's more convenient to go online. 

They feel like that you know 58% feel like they have greater access going online. again look at that just over 50% say it's because they couldn't get in to see a doctor and worrisome you know 45% say that it's as accurate as speaking with a health care professional. I'm sure many people on this call would take issue with that. 

We do too. But this is what Canadians are telling us. And we also this year added questions about AI because you know think a year or two years ago we were just thinking about social media as sort of the force multiplier for misinformation. 

But AI has very quickly taken in you know introduced itself into this space. And so we really wanted to understand okay well how is AI shaping this information environment? What we learned is that you know only a quarter trust AI and yet twice as many go to AI for health information. 

So look at those numbers right people are looking for health information on chat GPT or Google which now has AI integrated into any of its search tools. and they're also going there for treatment which is pretty wild considering the fact that physicians have said on mass that that's not a safe thing to do. you know LLMs like Chat GPT hallucinate information, don't reveal sourcing you know don't provide Canadian specific in you know insight and often lead patients astray. 

And so if you watched any of the media coverage from our release yesterday, you would have seen many doctors saying, "Hey, like sound the alarm bells. This is a problem." And it's especially a problem with younger Canadians, of course, because they spend more time with AI. And the people who use AI as a health source are five times more likely to experience harms than those who did not. 

which is stunning. and you know I think the more we can educate people about the limitations and the dangers that come with some of these tools you know the better we can help people. Now is AI like a ubiquitous you know bad thing? 

No, actually like in many ways people in the health care system are hopeful that AI will for instance reduce administrative burden on healthcare providers or perhaps provide you know closed system tools to allow people to just look at peer-reviewed research or there's lots of conversation happening here but but right now in this current environment AI is creating problems for Canadian patients. Now this was our headline slide last year. We asked people what kind of negative consequences they experienced from false health information and you know they were telling us that it was like creating confusion, mental distress, delay in seeking appropriate care, lowering trust, strained relationships and avoiding treatment due to misinformation too. 

But look at that 10 point drop year-over-year. that's rare. Like if you work in the data space, you know like that year-over-year change is significant. 

So when David and I looked at these numbers, we have a couple of working theories. Number one is there's an increase in skepticism in the health care system around health information, which I'll show you in a moment. And our it's our belief that that skepticism, which in and of itself isn't great because it's doing a bunch of other things for healthcare providers. 

it is actually leading Canadians to be smarter about how they consume information online, which is what we want, right? We want people to join us in this like consideration, right? But the other sort of working theories is that Canadians may be looking at what's happening in the US and going, you know what, like we don't want that. 

We we want to be different. We want to be smart. We're want to be educated about this stuff. 

So perhaps that's shifting things. And then lastly, you know, I'd love to be able to say the Canadian Medical Association's work through healthcare for real and working with our network of physicians and other p public health people. Like I think of the folks, the good folks at Toronto Public Health who we partner with and have been for the last year. 

Like everybody, a lot of people are working to try and make this better to try and protect people and and perhaps that's working, right? Because we're seeing a decrease. It doesn't mean we take our foot off the gas. 

Of course, we have a lot of work left to do. but I love the direction that's signaled on the slide. Now, here's the skepticism, right? 

So encountering inaccurate information, inaccurate information turns people away from the system. When they encounter misinformation, it makes them skeptical of any health information they see online, even if it's from a trusted source. So even if we do our jobs perfectly, the mess, the noise, the fragmentation, the the craziness south of the border, it's going to ruin the situation for all of us, right? 

Because even if you're a trusted source, folks may look at the content and go, "Oh, all of it's bad. I can't trust it." And and talk to your friends and family. I'm sure like we're getting to that point of saturation where especially with, you know, generative AI and some of the AI that allows you to create like fake people, fake images, fake video. 

Like, of course, humans would have this reaction, right? and the other thing that really worries us is nearly half of Canadians say that it's also making them more skeptical of the medical advice they're getting from their own health care providers. you know, that is really worrisome, right? 

Because, you know, every person's health situation is unique and specific and, you know, healthcare providers are designed to help folks navigate what their options are. And you know, if medical misinformation creates skepticism, you know, it will disrupt the patient provider relationship in ways that will create stress for both sides of that equation. But it's unmistakable Canadians want government and social media platforms to do something about it. 

Like very rare that we would see numbers like this in any study, but this is overwhelming. Like 90% of Canadians saying, "Hey, do something." pretty robust result here and we certainly tried to make the case yesterday in our release and you know hoping that government will take action on this. the good news is accurate information brings people back towards the health care system. 

When people have better access to health information it allows them to be a better patient and you know Canadians overwhelmingly trust doctors to help them navigate the system. So, like the work that you do, the work that we're doing, the work that all of our partners are doing online to support Canadians with healthy, trusted, smart health information, it works. And so if you're feeling discouraged, you know, this in the middle of February, in the middle of winter, like keep going because this stuff matters. 

and while I'm not a sexual health expert, you know, I'm so privileged to be on this panel with, you know, folks who know way better than me how to get this done because it's really important stuff. I'll just take a few more moments to show you guys sort of the the the media geek, the data geek part of this deck. So, this is not something we shared yesterday, but it's all available to you. 

Tom's going to send the deck after. Feel free to use these resources to make the case for, you know, increased support or tell your leaders why it's so so important to keep doing what you're doing. so, let me just give you a couple of little nuggets of like really fun data geek things. 

So first of all, good news. Like when people access health information, expertise is still the most important signal of accuracy. So who authors information is still powerful. 

It's a powerful tool. you know, not perfect here, but still, you know, not it's great. It's it could be worse. 

and doctors are best positioned to help people navigate. So it's physicians, your physician, pharmacist, nurse practitioners. Look at that. 

your local public health officer team just under 50. So, you know, still in a very strong position. government unfortunately closer to the bottom here. 

And look at that influencers at the bottom. So, it's interesting to me because we all know that there's an influencer economy out there, right? and so, while people don't trust influencers, they do trust doctors. 

And so, when you go to healthcare for real and you scroll our video, you'll see we're trying to turn doctors into like a trusted class of influencer, right? Which is a really powerful thing to think about. Now, remember I promised you those deep dive trust slides? 

Here they are. So, we talked earlier about physician trust, but here's where everybody else ranks. You probably see yourself on this slide. 

If you work for a local provincial public health organization, so you can screenshot this or save it for later. And then we also look at sort of news media and channel trust. you know, Canadian news organizations not doing too bad as a former journalist myself. 

Nice to see it. Only half of Canadians usually trust scientific studies though. So, you know, that's not perfect. 

Scientific consensus, scientific studies, how we communicate science remains a challenge. again, people think government should be protecting Canadians. This is sort of the breakdown of like when we ask them specifically who should do it. 

Health Canada comes to the top of that list. We also ask in this deck media habits by generation. So, if you're a content creator, this will be a good slide for you. 

Just where are people consuming? you know, Facebook continues to be a heavily used channel, YouTube as well. and while trust is down, people still go there. 

It's exactly the same dynamic as AI, right? So, low trust for social, high adoption for people nonetheless. And then the media ecosystem breakdowns here too if you're interested in that. 

And we also track media habits over here. This is just a I like doing this because when I was strategist elsewhere, I could never get access to these numbers. So if you're doing media relations, you can sort of see who's leading and who has impact. 

but people are seeing lots of health news. You know, it's stable, but 50% are seeing health news. So that's good. 

It's not, you know, the stability is actually good news. There's some resilience, right, in the system. And then lastly, we ask about news avoidance. 

And news avoidance because of overwhelming or negative news is a problem, right? People are avoiding content consumption because the world is, you know, in a bad place. And that's completely understandable from a mental health perspective. 

and just to wrap up, we do have provincial breakdowns. So like every province offers our topline stats and then juxtaposed against the national average. So we include some additional sort of liner notes on each province. 

And so feel free to dive into that section for your province specific insights. And with that, those are your headlines. I'm really looking forward to the conversation and any questions you may have. 

Over to you, Tom or Andrew.  

Andrew Townsend: That's all right. 

Thank you so much, Sophie. I want to say I'm a big fan of this is the third year you guys are doing the report and I'm a big fan of the perspectives that come from it because I find them so valuable in the work that we do. So, thank you for that. 

yes. So, I'm here to talk a bit more from Sophie's macro, bringing it down into a bit more of sexual health context. And I'm going to do that starting to talking about our Sex Plus campaign and some of the ways that Action Canada is looking at and thinking about AI technologies. 

and while I'm here talking about Sex Plus, I do want to give a shout out to the folks at Acadia University who are having a watchalong party with this. I appreciate that. so Sex Plus is Action Canada's flagship campaign designed to spark conversation, challenge misinformation and create space for asking more, learning more, and knowing more about sexual health. 

So taking place during sexual health week, which is right now, Sex Plus builds on over 20 years of public awareness, encouraging Canadians to get curious, celebrate, and protect our sexual health and rights. this week from February 8th to 14th, we're zooming in on sexual health and AI. the internet has changed a lot. 

so all the way from dialup internet which I do remember to today's Tik Tok trends which I don't but now we're dealing with the AI boom right and it can be overwhelming to know how this will impact our relationships, our kids and our access to information about our health. If you want more information about sex plus week, you can go to sex plusweek.ca. we have some resources, we have, posters people can download. 

and it's a great way to stay on top of the campaign from year to year. when it comes to monitoring AI developments, Action Canada is tracking its impact in several different areas. So while most people's daily use of AI can seem pretty mundane or routine, the further integration of AI tools into all aspects of our lives, particularly healthcare, changes our relationship to things like consent, digital sovereignty, privacy, privatization, safety, and way more. 

the companies that control our access to information have immense amount of power. And so it is incredibly concerning when the people in power aren't working to protect us from miss and disinformation. broadly and I know that Najma will go into this a bit more but broadly misinformation is info that is incorrect or mis misleading. 

So in a sexual health context this often looks like finding old or out of-date information unintentional bias like assumptions about people's gender or sexuality and even AI hallucinations that spit out madeup slot. Disinformation on the other hand is a practice of creating and sharing information with the purpose of misleading people. So, these are intentional actions and for our work, we're often fighting against organized anti-sex, anti-choice, and anti-trans movements. 

This looks like lying about health impacts, skewing study data, sharing things known to be false, or spreading misinformation on purpose. And while AI might be a new wrinkle, dealing with misinformation is nothing new. Sexual health educators have for years been talking about how to use media literacy and critical thinking skills when evaluating the sexual information that we come across. 

So, we have to remember to be critical about content and about the platforms and the people who own them. The things that we would ask about content like what is this resource's purpose? Who made it? 

Where can I look for more information? We also have to ask about the tools and the corporations. So, I'm going to recommend people check out our social media and sexual health fact sheet which is on the Action Canada website. 

It's a quick space to learn more about the ways that social media companies block, delete, or suppress sexual health content online. as well as many of our other resources that we have there. another thing I'm going to recommend people check out is our Get Offline and Talk campaign materials. 

We're soon going to be relaunching it, but Get Offline and Talk encourages people to step away from screens and to engage in meaningful in-person discussions. A great way to evaluate misinformation is to do it together. It's always a good idea to talk with someone else about what AI is telling you to make sure if it's legit or not. 

Sometimes bouncing it off people is a good way to say it out loud and hear like, "Oh, that doesn't sound right or I have more questions." so yes, accurate online sexual health spaces can be very helpful, and we'll talk about some more of those later on. But we also need offline environments where it's easier for people to ask questions and find answers. Offline questions allow us to connect on a human level, to listen and to be heard, and to build empathy and understanding in ways that online debate simply can't achieve. 

So on our website, you can find the get offline and talk campaign resources, including a conversation guide, which offers practical tips and strategies for having productive and empathetic conversations around things like comprehensive sexuality education or queer and trans rights. and while we're get getting things offline, I also really encourage people to download and print off your favorite sexual health resources. While online tours can offer a lot of convenience, and they're very easy to share. 

We can't rely on them to always be there. Software updates are breaking existing apps and websites, and funding cuts mean that long-standing organizations are having to close, which shuts down their online libraries. I think we'll also start seeing a renewed interest in resources created pre-AI, which are only going to get harder and harder to find. 

Big picture, as policy and health promotion experts, Action Canada is advocating for federal investments in a coordinated national approach to comprehensive sexuality education and a risk analysis of AI and platform-based disinformation relating to sexuality, sexual health, reproductive health, and gender. When people are equipped with information about their bodies, their sexuality, and how to have healthy sexual relationships of all kind, we are setting them up for success in every area of their life. For more, you can check out our latest blog post for Sex Plus called The Big Picture on Sexual Health and AI, which like I said, you can find at sex plusweek.ca. 

On a more local or person to person level, rather than becoming on billionaire run chat bots, we can choose to turn resources turn to resources created by real people for real people. So, urge you to check out some of our amazing partners like Media Smarts, CATIE, SIECCAN, and the Public Health Agency of Canada. We also have our associate organizations network, which is a group of sexual health service support and education providers from across the country who you can find out more about on our website. 

Also, check out your local public health units. These are all incredibly supportive and informative communities who are dedicated to improving health outcomes for everyone. No matter how old you are or where you live, everyone has the right to access accurate information about sexual health. 

Najma Kahiye: Thanks for listening to me. I'm going to pass it over to Najma to speak more about frontline experiences with sexual health misinformation.  

Thank you, Andrew. 

Good afternoon, everyone. So, thank you, Andrew, Sophie, and Tom. as Tom shared earlier, my name is Najma Kahiye and I'm the manager of the sexual health promotion program at Toronto Public Health and I'm thrilled to be here with you today to share some insights from with from my team. 

So, in terms of the presentation, I'm I'll walk you through the purpose of the presentation. I'll provide you with some background information on sexual health misinformation. I'll briefly touch on challenges to accessing accurate sexual health information and share some examples of sexual health misinformation from the front line. 

I'll walk you through some approaches to combating sexual health misinformation in this brave new world of AI. And finally, I'll share some resources that are really helpful. So this presentation will provide you with a frontline perspective on sexual health misinformation and the impacts of AI. 

And although I'm not a frontline worker, my team has compiled some relevant examples from the work and I'll be sharing those with you today. Again, I'll offer some strategies on how we can address sexual misinformation. So, I think Sophie and Andrew have done a really amazing job setting the context and highlighting the landscape about from what is happening, why we need to address sexual misinformation and the impacts of AI. 

But I do want to take a moment to talk about how sexual health misinformation can have negative health impacts on individuals, families, and communities. I also want to highlight a recent report that was released by the World Economic Forum January of 2026, the global risks report was released. 

And in the report, global leaders acknowledged that misinformation and disinformation and adverse outcomes of AI technologies were amongst the greatest risks to human societies today. So although our focus is on sexual health misinformation, the impacts of misinformation and the adverse outcomes of AI are far-reaching. So I will I won't spend a great deal of time on this slide but I think a lot of this has already been covered in terms of the challenges but I do want to quickly highlight the impacts resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic specifically the temporary closure of sexual health clinics and other sexual health and reproductive health services and the impacts resulting from school closures and the disruption to learning. 

These closures and disruptions are important when considering the experiences of youth and young adults because it resulted in limited opportunities for adolescence to gain comprehensive sexual health education and to utilize sexual health services. So I want you to keep this in mind when we walk through the examples. So I'll walk you through three examples of sexual misinformation and the impacts. 

The first is misinformation about being trans. So in a workshop targeted to parents, a participant states that being trans is a phase or trend. We know that this is inaccurate. 

Research shows that on average, children's sense of their own gender develops between the ages of three and five, and this can occur and begin as early as the age of two. Research also shows that the overwhelming majority of transgender and non-binary youth receive trans transition related healthcare continue to identify as transgender or non-binary after reaching adulthood. A 2022 study published in pediatrics by the trans youth project followed 317 children ages 3 to 12 who socially transitioned and found that 94% still identified as transgender 5 years after their initial social transition. 

The impact of this misinformation is clear. It is extremely harmful to trans youth and trans children and can result in barriers to accessing gender affirming care and support services. To illustrate this, I want to offer and share a real life Canadian example of this that is playing out in the courts right now. 

In May of last year, the Canadian Medical Association CMA along with three physicians in Alberta launched a constitutional challenge against Alberta government regarding Bill 26. So, this bill severely restricts access to gender affirming care for minors. It restricts physicians down to which medications they can use, when, and how. 

So, I'll go to another example of misinformation about the pill. During a virtual session, a university student shares that taking the pill can cause serious health issues. She goes on to say that the birth control pill is unnatural and that it robs us of our health. 

We know there's been extensive research on the efficacy and safety of the pill and misinformation about the pill is not new, but what is new is the pervasive tactics used to spread misinformation and the impacts of AI. So, a quick search on Tik Tok will reveal that the pill causes infertility, that it ruins your gut biome, that it causes severe mental health issues, that it can change who you are as a person and who you are attracted to. A study published in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health analyzed 100 Tik Tok videos on contraceptive health that had collectively garnered nearly 5 billion views and 14.6 6 million likes. 

The pill was one of the most frequently discussed topics and researchers found that more than half of the video creators, 53% explicitly rejected hormonal birth control while about a third, 34% expressed distress in health professionals. Meanwhile, 38% endorsed fertility or cycle tracking without disclosing the limitations of this method. So the scale, reach, and the level of misinformation levied in in these videos is obviously alarming. 

And in terms of this impact, a recent study conducted by a group of Canadian researchers who evaluated British Columbia's universal coverage for contraceptives found that there was a steep decline in prescriptions for women aged 20 to 29. This drop is consistent with reports in other settings including Britain and researchers are urging further study. Example number three, misconception misinformation about condoms. 

So during an STI education session with youth, one participant states that condoms make it impossible to orgasm. They're bad vibes. Several other participants agree. 

So obviously it is possible to achieve orgasm with a condom. And while the sensation may be different, there are ways that you can make condom use more pleasurable. For example, ensuring that you have the proper fit, using lubricant, and experimenting, using different techniques and types of condoms can enhance pleasure for both partners. 

So on the surface, this misinformation appears to be relatively harmless, and it's an age-old misconception about condom use. However, in 2024, the World Health Organization released a multi-part report on the health behavior and school age children study. This study surveyed over 242,000 children, sorry, 15 year olds across 42 countries and regions. 

The study showed a decline in condom use among adolescents. The repo the report found 30% of 15 year-olds across reported not not using either a condom or a contraceptive pill in their last sexual encounter. In Canada, 63% of girls and 61% of boys reported using a condom in their last sexual encounter. 

We've seen a rise in sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies within this age group. And given all that we know about misinformation and the role that AI plays in amplifying this misinformation, there is a clear need for sustained educational and health interventions to promote condom use. So now that I've shared a few examples of sexual health misinformation and we understand the scale and impact, you may be asking yourself, what can we do about it? 

So as a first step, we can help equip people with health media literacy across the population focusing on key demographics, for example, Gen Z. We can also raise the alarms about the use of generative AI for health advice or information. I think Sophie spoke to that a bit. 

We can facilitate access to trusted sexual health professionals like members of my team. And it's equally important that we provide them with the resources they need to to address misinformation. We can engage with the public and collaborate with trusted sources to deliver messages. 

So, we know that family and friends are often the go-to for people to ask questions. So, how do we tap into those those sources and how do we collaborate with trusted maybe content creators, doctors online, etc. So additionally we can create systems to regulate and or monitor misinformation. 

So you can think of this as like early alarm or early monitoring systems. This can be done in several ways. For example, employing social listening across a variety of platforms to see what's trending to look at what are the hashtags like what are people talking about online? 

What are people sharing online? For frontline workers, this can be done by tracking common questions and misinformation you come across. We can also identify opportunities to pre-bunk misinformation. 

So pre-bunking is a pre preventative measure that aims to prepare audiences to recognize and resist misinformation and disinformation. It involves warning people about potential misinformation before they encounter it while debunking aims to counter the false information after it has been consumed. Finally, we we need to continue to advocate for comprehensive evidence-based sexual health education. 

So in terms of strategies for staff on the front line, I can't stress enough the importance of establishing a trusting therapeutic relationship which entails creating psychological safety. This can be done in so many ways and it ultimately comes down to how we show up in our work. From being empathetic to engaging in active listening to understanding our social location and power and biases, frontline workers have an opportunity to create space for dialogue without without judgment. 

One way you can do this is allowing space for inquiry and questions. A practical approach that my staff use in workshops and in classrooms with students and youth is to set aside and set up a question box. This allows students and youth to ask questions anonymously. 

We also conduct training for other service providers, for example, youth workers, recreation staff, staff working at youth hubs in the library on how to be an askable adult. So, especially in the context of youth, being able to be approachable and a and a trusted adult is really important in this work. Again, this all goes back to the idea about safety and allowing there to be curiosity and inquiry. 

It's also important for us to ask follow-up questions and acknowledge what has been shared by others. So, thanking others for their questions and for sharing. So once you've probed and really acknowledged the person's perspective, you have a sense of the type of misinformation that they have encountered, it's time to assess their readiness to receive information. 

One way of doing this is to ask, may I share with you some information that I've learned? May I may I offer a different perspective? If the person is open to receiving this information, this would be the ideal time to share the correct information while while acknowledging their strengths. 

One potential response would be stating, "It's clear you've looked into this topic and I would love to share." And then you insert whatever information. It's also extremely important that we're transparent in our interaction about any risks, any side effects. Withholding this information can erode trust and confidence. 

Another approach that my team frequently uses is communicating values. So messages about common values about respect, safety, choice, autonomy can be weaved into our messaging. Again, reflecting on the audience and what their values are. 

Finally, giving folks the permission to reframe. One of my favorite quotes is by Maya Angelo is when you know better, you do better. And I genuinely believe that everyone is trying their best and doing their best with information that they have. 

Another strategy is to reinforce accurate sexual health information. Maybe it's through a follow-up email or a follow-up phone call. Maybe it's through your organization social media posts. 

Maybe service users are subscribed to a newsletter or a mailing list. When people see the same information in various places, it helps to reinforce information. So, I think it's really important that we do that. 

We can also direct people to credible sources of information and other resources and supports in the community. You can ask you can do this by asking if you can share a few credible resources that you have found to be helpful. Ultimately, this approach allows service providers to understand the service users's understanding of the misinformation, the motivation, confidence, and roadblocks by asking questions, acknowledging their autonomy, strengths, and personal responsibility, and reserving judgment. 

So, I think I have probably 30 seconds left, but I'll just take a minute to walk through some helpful resources. And we'll be sharing these links after the webinar. So, in terms of online resources that promotes online safety and combat misinformation, there's a ton of great resources. 

Andrew's already spoken to Media Smarts, CMA, I know [unclear] knows a lot about this, Healthcare for Real. That resource is phenomenal. There's also a a resource called control app that looks at misinformation and then a new one to me was science upfirst and online sexual health services that we frequently refer our clients to. 

So there is the sexual health Ontario website and that would direct you to a whole resource of information online and you can connect to a counselor at the sexual health information line. Action Canada for sexual health and rights. They have a chat option to call to I think it's a call actual phone line, sorry. 

And you're able to text someone as well to get information. that's also available at teen health source which is run by Planned Parenthood. this is a youth run line. 

they do provide responses to questions via text. They also have a chat bot and I also really wanted to share a resource called Amaze. So this resource has a lot of videos and they have a really great chatbot using AI. 

My staff have used this very have used this frequently and they really talk about how great this resource is especially for for younger people, younger children and also youth. And then again credible sources online. Andrew's touched on a few of them, so I'll I'll stop there. 

I'll stop sharing, but thank you so much and I'll bring it back to Tom.  

Andrew: All right. we're going to get into the Q&A now. 

So, thank you so much Sophie and Najma for your presentations and for for really showing the big picture and then also really concretizing it in the way that that we can start addressing some of those misinformation pieces. I want to start the Q&A off by thinking a bit about how a lot of this how people interact with different channels is very relational and and Sophie you mentioned in the report that people's trust in their families is going up which is huge because when we think about sexual health education it's a collaboration between healthcare providers between educators and family are such a slice of that of where people can go to feel trusted and ask questions. And so I was hoping both of you could talk a bit maybe a bit more about from the clinician side of things like how that trust is fostered relationally and then also Najma like I know like health promoters are kind of dropping in to do a session but some of that trust is about building that that profile and that relationship with the people you do workshops with. 

So, I was hoping you could both take a second to sort of talk about ways that people can build trust in particularly to fight misinformation.  

Sophie: Well, I mean, first of all, both of your presentations are so interesting and isn't it nice to like hang out with people who care about this topic. Like when you know better, you do better is actually also the like motto that we applied to healthcare for real by the way. 

And so I was so like happy to hear you say it too because you're right that's essentially like we need the same sort of like energetic purpose to go in the in that direction. I just want to say that first. so it's always nice to hang out, but I'll just say like so there's two parts like social media in the past has generally been quite corporate and quite institutionally led and that's a mistake and we you know I like many worked on that front in media relations and comms for a really long time and I was you know and it worked for a really long time and it no longer works. 

Max fragmentation, the influencer creator market, the the appetites of the audience have all shifted and it would be insane to think that old communications techniques will work in a modern environment. So humanizing what's on the feed is like top priority. And what that means is it's not usually your CEO, but it's like your frontline nurse, your frontline doctor, your frontline youth advocate, your, you know, the cool person who cares a lot about something. 

Like that's really powerful in the feed. All the data shows it, but the of course it's hard to do that because all of our institutions have this sort of developed risk aversion, right? And god forbid you switch spokespeople and you actually go to like the cool person who will do well online. 

and then so that's one part and I think the processes by which we make communications decisions the people we elevate the diversity we apply all of it's impactful but it's actually really hard to do because it involves a level of change management in our organizations to think differently and to be creative and you know we've been live with healthcare for real for a year so I can tell you I know how hard that is okay but it's worthwhile doing and then the second part I would just say that old school matters old school matters matters more than ever like on the street in the office down by Toronto Public Health at Metro Hall like this stuff matters and so you know the ability to tell people to go offline and then create those real tactical moments. So they're so exciting and I think for us too like the magic happens when you when you connect both worlds, right? And you create an environment where you can go old school and you can also play in the feed and you create a dynamism there and then people are like, "Oh, this is great." because you can't it's not enough to be accurate and an expert anymore. 

You also have to be interesting and cool and relevant. And I think that's the primary challenge right now in this space.  

Najma: And I'll just add to that Sophie. 

I think when I think of my staff and the frontline perspective, you're right, Andrew. We have sometimes we're doing workshops where we might meet someone once, right? So, how do you have a lasting impression? 

How do you support people? I think there is an element of like obviously having that face tof face interaction. A lot of our workshops are in person. 

We do do some virtual workshops as well. But I think building that connection in session being able to you know really demonstrate that you care about people that you are here to support that you're able to answer questions that people sometimes often feel really embarrassed or scared to ask anyone else. They may not have someone else to go to. 

and even if we think of cultural considerations like there might be you know considering how people's up upbringing impacts their ability to ask these questions and you know your family doctor is really busy you know how are you going to have these question like how are you going to get your answers right so I think a lot of people are are missing that connection so where possible we try to foster that connection and we also recognize in some spaces for example we work within the schools we support over 800 schools in the city of Toronto. my small but mighty team goes out and they support educators. So we do a lot of training in the sector because we might not be the most trusted adult in that room in that classroom setting. 

So how do we support the capacity of educators to deliver on comprehensive sexual health education? How do we support them to really respond to the need that young people have with they have a desire to have this information and to get this information and this information really matters. it impacts their life, right? 

So, I think that's the way in which we try, you know, to navigate it. we also work really closely with our comm's team. I have to say, Sophie, that you've worked with as well at CMA. 

Sophie: Oh, we love those guys. Yeah, they're amazing. 

Najma: They're amazing. 

We have a lot of interesting like social media campaigns. So, shout out to my comm's colleagues as well. I think we try really hard to to engage at multiple levels and where we can and recognize who has the the biggest sphere of influence, who's the trusted adult here, who can we provide to share that information and when we are providing workshops for, you know, the broader community outside of students, we are the trusted person. 

So, how do we show up and be that person? 

Andrew: Nice. I want to build off of a thing you mentioned and I think it'll touch on a couple things that people are saying in the chat in the Q&A because a lot of this is about capacity building. It's not strictly about as much as we do want to be as much as we are promoting good information and debunking myths and things. there is a big element of reinforcing media literacy skills and critical thinking skills because it's not so much that you know I don't use AI chat bots but what I know is that lots of other people are it's hard for me to like book a cab without running into like an AI chatbot who's booking that. 

So, like people are using AI and it's it's hard it's a hard message for people to hear if I'm starting everything by being like AI sucks, don't use AI. If you use AI, you're doing it wrong. Like that's not a way to invite people in to have those conversations. 

But when we can have the the capacity building discussion around like what is the AI telling you, how are you verifying that? and really encouraging people to to go to these other sources to that are offline to verify so that they can find where there are better sources where there are sources that are more in line with their community what's available in their cities what's available in their country even what the laws are like AI is going to be the first step for a lot of people Sophie you pointed out only a quarter of the people trust it but still half the people are using it so like people are going to keep going there And I you know I remember when Wikipedia first started and the conversation had to be like okay so you're going to read Wikipedia but that can't be like your beginning and end of what you learn. 

Sophie: Yeah. 

Andrew: And so with the I guess it's a roundabout way to the question but even you mentioned it Najma too where some of the misinformation examples that you shared I've been hearing those for 15 years that I've been doing sexual health education. the misinformation, the myths aren't changing, but it's the skills we have to be reinforcing people to be able to address those myths. And I was wondering if either of you could talk about that a bit when it comes to addressing sexual health misinformation or the stuff that healthcare for real is doing in identifying good information. 

Sophie: I mean, so one of the things I've learned from public health colleagues is is ideas around like tone, psych safety, and, and humanizing the like the interaction because the truth of algorithms on social media is that they're raged driven. Like they they cap there are people making money off of anger and conflict, right? Which is antithetical to sorry, my cat keeps wanting to move my computer. 

But it's antithetical to what humans actually need to be able to connect and understand, right, and feel safe enough to talk about it. And you know, imagine like sexual health is like one of the most difficult topics for people to talk about, I suspect, right? and so imagine, you know, like trying to interact on that topic in a conflictual environment. 

So I think a lot of this is a is a question of day-to-day tonality choices, approach choices, creativity, humor choices. So when you look at healthcare for real video, you'll notice that we're walking a very careful line to be entertaining but helpful. We don't judge people for consuming this information. 

I mean, how can you blame people for going online if they can't get a doctor? Like that's crazy. Why would we do that? 

and so just trying to pick the right tonality is is so so so important. you know and I the other thing I will say is that what the Trump administration has done is deeply polarized our environment and it's pushed people into corners where it's being it's getting harder and harder to bring those people back with us and I think of you know bad money at the Super Bowl not to like extend it to a super super macro level but you know the whole love is stronger than hate thing. Well, that's kind of true here too, right? 

Like all of us have been trapped in mis like catching misinformation or know, you know, not realizing something was wrong. And as health educators, it's our responsibility not just to give people information, but to create the psychological conditions for people to join us in the conversation and that has to be reflected in content. So it nothing drives me more crazy than institutional content that basically says you're wrong, we're right, listen to us, this is the truth. 

like it just it's so binary in its offering. I don't know if you guys agree, but for me it's just it's it's it's in and of itself the the problem. That's why when I say we have to be creative and like interesting and humor. 

That's what I mean. I mean we have to create psych safety through the content itself almost would be my proposal. I don't know. 

Do you guys agree? 

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I it's there has to be a space. You have to create that space and Najma you were talking about that too. 

You have to create a space where people can ask where questions from where they're coming from and not shut them down before they're through that door. We've got only about a minute left now to if you want to take a shot at answering the question quickly. 

Najma: Yeah, I was just going to just kind of echo what Sophie had shared as well. 

Like also in terms of accessibility, like there are people who are living in rural communities who don't have access to someone to to speak about, right? So I think I may have complicated the message a little by talking about ask the chatbot at amaze.org. or but people are going to lean in and and in in our experience that's a chatbot that really works and the way that it's built in terms of the algorithms and how it's collecting information. 

I think we we may see a lot of advancements in AI you know in the next few years where it is much more you know it is it works more effectively that it's actually conveying correct information but I think for sure I think coming from our perspective I really am just trying to help to support people in making the best decisions about their lives about their bodies about their health and we have a role to play in that so that's all I have to say about that thank you. 

Andrew: Thanks I'll pass it back to Tom to wrap.  

Tom: Perfect. Well, I just want to give a special appreciation and shout out to Sophie, Andrew, and Najma for their wonderful presentations and for really facilitating some really great conversations for today's webinar. 

as a quick reminder, after today's webinar, you will be receiving a copy of the presentation deck as well as a recording of today's webinar. as well as a short feedback survey that we really appreciate your feedback on. On behalf of the public health agency of Canada, we thank you for your participation and we hope to see you in a future webinar series.