San Diego County Board of Supervisors declared health misinformation a public health crisis and called on partners to identify & label health misinformation, develop targeted community engagement, & create educational programs to help residents distinguish evidence based information from misinformation. HIAT created an information guide for the public, a toolkit for libraries, distributed over 50,000 COVID test kits, hosted a book talk, and organized a targeted media campaign in zip codes from the Healthy Places Index.

HIAT cross promoted each library’s specific resources and programs via press release and social media. We translated the guide into 8 languages and collectively pooled resources to host an abortion access discussion and provided free books. We collaborated with San Diego County HHSA to make data driven decisions to distribute free COVID test kits in targeted communities identified in the Health Places Index. In addition, HIAT also secured a NNLM grant to promote our health misinformation guide on public transportation.

Our online health guide has over 4,100 visits. Our distribution of 50,000 COVID test kits was so successful we were invited to distribute a 2nd set of kits. 300 books about abortion were distributed at our reproductive health program & we had survey outcomes showing 80% of attendees are more knowledgeable, 86% will apply what they learned, & 83% are more aware of health resources & services at the library. HIAT has been invited to present our work with NNLM & at the SERRA Cooperative Library Professional Development Day