Local, state public health officials overwhelmingly faced serious backlash during pandemic, report reveals
Meghan Holohan8 minutes ago.
Public Health
COVID-19
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a person approached a female US public health official in a grocery store, complaining about the ongoing disease-mitigation efforts. As the person issued threats, they revealed that they knew her children’s names and when they played in their backyard. Later, the children’s schedules and some personal details appeared on social media, a practice known as doxxing.
This is one example of the harassment that many local and state public health officials endured during the pandemic.
“That was shocking,” Marian Moser Jones, PhD, MPH, associate professor of health services management and policy at The Ohio State University College of Public Health, told CIDRAP News. “Health department officials, especially local health departments that are strapped for money already, they don’t have the capabilities to deal with that.”
Moser Jones and colleagues interviewed 109 public health officials from 18 US regions to understand the backlash they faced during the pandemic. The research was published this month in the American Journal of Public Health.
“These are public servants who are appointed, not elected, who are used to just serving quietly and doing public service,” said Moser Jones, lead author of the study.
‘Public health is not the enemy’
Of the 109 public health officials, 76% experienced what researchers called “extraordinary backlash” such as threats and harassment. About half, 47%, experienced “undermining backlash,” which includes excessive data requests, demands for policy changes, and publicly questioning of their expertise.We need to make it visible and understandable to the public how vital public health is.
Marian Moser Jones, PhD, MPH
Women experienced more backlash than men, with 61% of female public health officials reporting extraordinary backlash, compared with 44% of men.
“We wanted to understand what it was like at the local level across the country and how it varied,” Moser Jones said, adding they also hoped to gain insight into how people coped with a “once-in-a-generation” pandemic.
Some managed by leaving their positions and moving to a different city.
Multiple public health officers “had to move across the country to different jobs and different locations because of safety concerns,” Moser Jones said. “They basically couldn’t go out to the grocery store, to the movies, to dinner with their spouses without risking being harassed or threatened. And that’s a sad state of affairs.”
Yet, some public health officials received support. Some lived in areas with supportive police departments that took their concerns seriously. Moser Jones recalls an anecdote about a local sheriff who went out of his way to protect a female public health official who received “really crude sexualizing threats.” Some public health officials asked protesters to “take it down a few notches,” which sometimes reduced harassment.
“There were other people who would go out to the protesters and give them coffee and engage with them,” Moser Jones said. “That’s not going to be an effective tactic for people who really mean violence.”
She believes that both legislation, such as laws against doxxing, and greater awareness could help protect public health officials from future backlash.
“We need to make it visible and understandable to the public how vital public health is,” she said. “That will help people understand that public health is not the enemy.”