Providing evidence-based medicine and dispelling misinformation into 2024

In this video interview, Candice Jones, MD, general pediatrician, Orlando, Florida and Editorial Advisory Board member of Contemporary Pediatrics shares her professional goals heading into 2024.

Jones explains continuing to provide evidence-based medicine and information to her patients is crucial, in a growing world of misinformation.

Interview transcript (edited for clarity):

Contemporary Pediatrics:

As a pediatric health care provider, what do you want to continue into 2024 and why?

Candice Jones, MD:

Professionally, right now, one thing that's very important to me, and I want to continue into the new year, is to continue to provide trusted evidence-based medicine to the community. We all know there is a growing, growing, growing loud, loud, false information across platforms, social media, probably being the number one and it's very loud. I just had a close friend send me a text and say, "your thoughts?" It was some person, I don't know their medical background, dispelling health information from medical doctors, and using a lot of myth and misinformation and conspiracy theory.

She considered, "is this is this true, or this is true, and what are your thoughts?" So even my well educated friend, husband is a doctor, and her good friend is a doctor was considering this very confident, false information.

As an American Academy of Pediatrics spokesperson, and as someone who does have a presence on social media, I just want to continue to put out correct information so that people will have a balance, and will have correct information to counter some of the noise that's out there. And that ties into clinically, something that we're doing. There's a newer vaccine [nirsevimab] Beyfortus (AstraZeneca), that provides protection from RSV, which is a viral infection that can be very serious for young infants. So that's something new for me clinically, that I'm trying to get our team moving smoothly with incorporating that into our vaccine schedule.

We're doing it but it's new and when things are new, sometimes there's challenges. My practice change of offering that to new moms with new babies, getting the uptake of this new vaccine, which can, I believe, save some lives from young infants who really struggle with RSV infections during this season.

Flu vaccines, continuing to recommend COVID-19 vaccines and being updated there. So my commitment to making sure that my patient population is vaccinated and protected is still paramount in clinical practice, and kind of counteracting some of the misinformation out there any way that I can is something that I definitely want to rev up and continue to do into the new year.

Personally, I think I always have similar things I want to improve upon for the new year. I would just simply say, continuing to take care of myself, self care is very important so that I can be the best wife and mom that I can be personally. Some of those things include continuing to, even though I don't like exercising, continuing to get in my 3 days a week, push through exercise, and be healthy in any way that I can so that I can be my best self for my family and my kids and anyone else that I want to help include them our patients.