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Bill Adair

Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy
Sanford School of Public Policy
Sanford Building 136, Box 90241, Durham, NC 27708
136 Sanford Building, Box 90241, Durham, NC 27708

Outreach & Engaged Scholarship


Bass Connections Team Leader - Data and Technology for Fact-checking · 2019 - 2020 Projects & Field Work Information, Society & Culture
Bass Connections Faculty Team Leader - Data and Technology for Fact-checking · 2018 - 2019 Projects & Field Work

Primary Theme: Information, Society & Culture

Today, our society is struggling with an unprecedented amount of falsehoods, hyperboles and half-truths that do harm to democracy, health, economy and national security. Fact-checking is a vital tool for defending against this onslaught. Despite the rise of fact-checking efforts globally, fact-checkers find themselves increasingly overwhelmed and find it difficult to reach some segments of the public with their messages.

Bass Connections Faculty Team Member - Vaccine Misinformation and Its Link to Vaccine Hesitancy and Uptake in Durham · 2018 - 2019 Projects & Field Work flag North Carolina

Primary Theme: Global Health

Vaccinations administered during pregnancy and the first year of a child’s life are crucial for preventing a myriad of potentially deadly and debilitating infections such as polio, pertussis, measles, influenza and tetanus. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence on the benefits of vaccinations, pregnant women and parents of young children often refuse to accept, or choose to space out, vaccinations for themselves or their children. This phenomenon, termed vaccine hesitancy, is blamed for several vaccine-preventable outbreaks in the U.S., including the 2017 measles outbreak in a Somali community in Minnesota. In order to design effective behavior change interventions to mitigate vaccine hesitancy, we need to understand the role of misinformation in the development or promotion of vaccine hesitancy, as well as the subsequent decision to accept vaccines without delay.