Sarah Morgan

Healthcare Geek.
Professional Communicator.

Healthcare Personal

Trusted Sources on COVID-19

I am not a scientist or a clinician. Or a truck driver. There’s very little I can do to help anybody right now, other than follow the rules and stay home. So I am. But something occurred to me this morning.

What I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career.

Okay, no, I can’t really pull off quoting Liam Neeson. But here’s the thing: I’ve worked in pharmaceutical, biotech, and life-sciences public relations, marketing, and communications since I was 19.

What that means is that I’ve spent 23 years getting very good at talking to scientists, clinicians, and executives; understanding the complex information about science, medicine, and technology they want the world to know; and translating it for them into common English for other healthcare professionals, reporters, investors, patients, and the public.

What this further means is that I’ve spent those 23 years becoming very good at figuring out who I trust to give me that information. And so, that’s what occurred to me: I could help that way.

There are plenty of things I’m not good at. Please never hire me to cook you a six-course dinner. But I write and ghostwrite for a lot of extraordinarily brilliant and highly respected people. So trust their opinions: they pay me to be very good at what I do.

I’ve created a Twitter list called COVID-19 Trusted Sources that gathers the tweets of institutions, individuals, and publications I trust implicitly.

That link takes you to their collected wisdom. I’ve followed many of them for more than a decade. If they are sharing information, it can be trusted. It will be accurate, it will be honest, it will be clear. I hope you find it helpful. Please feel free to use it and to share it.

I follow many more people than this on Twitter, obviously, and trust many of them very much, but this is my “greatest hits” of the most useful for the most people without being overwhelming or too much “inside baseball”. Here’s the list in detail (I may update it) so you can see who the accounts are and (where I thought it might be helpful) why I chose them:

  1. Endpoints News: https://endpts.com
  2. Stat News: https://www.statnews.com
  3. The World Health Organization (WHO): https://twitter.com/who
  4. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC): https://twitter.com/CDCgov
  5. The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS): https://twitter.com/HHSGov
  6. Harvard Public Health: https://twitter.com/HarvardChanSPH
  7. The Gates Foundation: https://twitter.com/GatesFoundation
  8. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the WHO https://twitter.com/DrTedros
  9. Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA): https://twitter.com/DrWoodcockFDA
  10. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the FDA, 2017-2019: https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD
  11. Dr. Kevin Pho, 2004 founder of KevinMD, a site for healthcare professionals collecting their stories and opinions: https://twitter.com/kevinmd
  12. Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, editor-in-chief of Medscape and theheart.org: https://twitter.com/EricTopol
  13. Michelle Fay Cortez, health/science/med tech reporter for Bloomberg News: https://twitter.com/FayCortez
  14. Meg Tirrell, biotech/pharma reporter for CNBC: https://twitter.com/megtirrell
  15. Peter Loftus, drug/device/healthcare reporter for WSJ: https://twitter.com/Loftus
  16. Matt Herper, reporter for Stat News: https://twitter.com/matthewherper
  17. Helen Branswell, senior writer, infectious diseases, Stat News: https://twitter.com/HelenBranswell
  18. Adam Feuerstein, senior writer for Stat News: https://twitter.com/adamfeuerstein
  19. Damian Garde, biotech reporter for Stat News: https://twitter.com/damiangarde
  20. Antonio Regalado, biotech reporter, MIT Technology Review: https://twitter.com/antonioregalado
  21. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): https://twitter.com/JAMA_current
  22. The British Medical Journal (BMJ): https://twitter.com/bmj_latest
  23. The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM): https://twitter.com/NEJM
  24. The Lancet: https://twitter.com/TheLancet

Comments

Be the first to leave a comment.

Leave A Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.