YouTube new feature helps user to find accurate health info

Today marks an innovative step by YouTube in the realm of public health awareness. The platform has unveiled its latest feature, the First Aid Information Shelves, aimed at streamlining the process of acquiring crucial, life-preserving knowledge on basic first aid and emergency procedures. 

First aid feature on YouTube

New feature positions itself prominently at the forefront of search results, showcasing instructional videos from esteemed healthcare institutions such as Mass General Brigham. These videos are crafted to be intuitive and straightforward, ensuring that essential first aid information is easily digestible and readily accessible, bypassing the need for interpreting complex guidelines. When users delve into searches covering a range of urgent health scenarios, including CPR, choking or Heimlich maneuvers, controlling bleeding, recognizing and responding to heart attacks, strokes, seizures, and opioid overdoses, these First Aid Information Shelves come into play. They provide visual guides, for example, on executing CPR correctly, methods to halt severe bleeding, and ways to assist someone experiencing an opioid overdose, thereby equipping users with the knowledge to potentially save lives in critical situations.

US is the first country to be tested

Embarking on an innovative journey, the launch of a new program is set to grace both the United States and Spanish-speaking regions, with plans to expand its linguistic and geographical reach in the future. "This pivotal moment marks a leap forward in democratizing access to reliable first aid information, particularly for individuals lacking medical expertise, in moments when it's crucially needed," expressed Dr. Garth Graham, the dynamic force at the helm of healthcare and public health partnerships at YouTube, as he articulated in a recent blog post. He emphasized YouTube's dedication to leveraging the dynamic medium of video to transform public health knowledge into a universally accessible resource.

Spreading the medical falsehoods on YouTube

In a bold move to combat the spread of medical falsehoods on its digital terrain, YouTube introduces 'video shelves', its latest arsenal in the ongoing battle. The urgency of addressing medical misinformation was thrust into the spotlight during the COVID-19 pandemic, a period that saw YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, implementing a stringent policy against vaccine misinformation. This policy was inclusive, targeting content that propagated erroneous beliefs about vaccine safety, efficacy, and composition. Prior to this significant policy shift, the platform had already made strides by removing over a million videos that perpetuated hazardous COVID-19 myths.

The fight against medical misinformation on YouTube extends beyond the realm of vaccines. Last summer marked a significant move by the platform as it purged videos endorsing cancer treatments that were either detrimental or ineffective and discouraged seeking professional medical care. Furthermore, in 2022, YouTube reinforced its commitment to this cause by initiating a crackdown on videos spreading falsehoods about abortion, vowing to eliminate content deemed to be perilous.