Oklahoma doctors launch campaign to fight misinformation, promote trust

TULSA — The overwhelming volume of misinformation and outright lies about COVID-19 and the vaccines designed to prevent it have eroded the relationship of trust between health providers and their patients, according to the president of the Oklahoma State Medical Associations.

Dr. Mary Clarke, who also maintains a family medicine practice in Stillwater and is a member of the Healthier Oklahoma Coalition, tells KRMG the OSMA has launched a public information campaign called “Pro-Science is Pro-Business,” designed to help combat misinformation and rebuild trust.

In an exclusive interview with KRMG, Dr. Clarke said some health care workers have actually been threatened because they refused to comply with demands they use unverified, untested, or even dangerous methods to prevent or treat COVID-19.

“We don’t usually get in front of positions...in medicine,” Clarke told KRMG. “We have a relationship with our patients. Patients love their primary care doctors, they love their cardiologists. They may not have a great opinion of medicine, doctors in general, but if you ask them, they love their doctors, they love their specialists.

“But now that’s starting to erode, and that’s affecting not just COVID, and all the other public health crises we’re dealing with right now, but it’s starting to affect other parts of healthcare, and how we take care of patients - dissolving that very tight relationship that you build with your patients. And we did not expect that - never before have we seen anything like that.”

“We can’t just be passive, and we can’t just talk with our patients,” she added. “We have to be more in front of the public eye in general.”

You can hear our entire interview with Dr. Clarke here:

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