World Health Day 2026: Increasing Trust in Science

On April 7th is World Health Day. This year’s campaign “Stand with science. Choose evidence. Trust facts. Support science-led health—for people, animals, and the planet.” highlights a critical challenge: trust in science, particularly in health and medicine, cannot be taken for granted. Surveys from Harvard Medicine and the Pew Research Center show that public confidence in scientists and medical institutions has declined over the past decade, with a more pronounced drop following the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the same time, the environment in which people encounter health information has become more complex. As highlighted in analyses published in Springer Nature, the rapid spread of misinformation, the political instrumentalisation of scientific issues, and inconsistent public narratives around science have all contributed to a growing erosion of trust. In the context of health, where scientific evidence directly informs personal and societal decisions, this creates a significant risk.

Strengthening Trust in Science: A Shared Responsibility

Against this backdrop, rebuilding trust in science is not simply a matter of communicating more information. For researchers it means, that communicating their science is no longer a “nice-to-have” and it involves more than simplifying results. It requires understanding what people believe, how these beliefs are formed, and what they need to know to make informed decisions. Responsibility needs to shift from from the public to scientists, who must design communication that is relevant, accessible, and tailored to specific audiences, with the ultimate aim of enabling informed decision-making through dialogue. Researchers in the SINPAIN consortium have shared their perspectives on why communicating their work matters, how they make complex topics understandable, and the challenges they encounter when engaging with non-expert audiences. Their perspectives may differ, but their goal is the same: making complex research accessible to enable people to make better, more informed decisions.

Magali Cucchiarini (Universität des Saarlandes) emphasises the importance of making scientific work visible beyond academia: “To make non-expert audiences aware of the efforts of the scientific community to work together to improve the health of the population.” At the same time, she highlights the challenge of explaining highly specialised research, noting that “my research is based on highly sophisticated methods of molecular biology that may be difficult to explain to the general audience.” To address this, she relies on simple visual tools, using “simple schemes and drawings” to make complex concepts more accessible.

Annalisa Chiocchetti (Università del Piemonte Orientale) approaches science communication from a deeply personal perspective. As a mother of three, her starting point was a simple but profound question from her children: “What is your job, mum, and why does it take you away from us so often?” To answer it, she turned to storytelling, describing her research as a “hidden garden” inside the body, “a place we still do not fully understand,” where things can “grow in the wrong way, or break,” and where her work is to understand why, so that damage can be fixed or even prevented. Through these stories, she was not only simplifying science, but also sharing “the curiosity, the responsibility and the hope under it.” This experience shaped her broader approach to communication: starting from clear ideas, using simple language, and helping people form a mental image of what science does and why it matters. At the same time, she acknowledges a key challenge: “Science is complex, uncertain and often slow, while people naturally look for clear answers and immediate impact.” Her response is to focus on meaning rather than detail, and to be transparent about uncertainty while still conveying purpose. Ultimately, for her, communication is a responsibility: “If we want science to matter, people must be able to recognise themselves in it, to see how it connects to their lives and why it is worth trusting and supporting.”

Rafaela Zani Coeti (Universität des Saarlandes) highlights both the importance and the difficulty of communicating science today. She argues that scientific knowledge should be shared more broadly: “Science has been developed from our interpretation of nature in order to improve our quality of life, so it is somewhat unfair that this knowledge cannot be shared with everyone.” While she actively engages through campaigns and social media, she also points to a major obstacle: “The big challenge for me is communicating science in a world of fake news, where people are more likely to share and trust misinformation or miraculous cures.”

Joan Cabellos (Asphalion) highlights the importance of making not only scientific research but also regulatory processes more transparent and understandable to the public. As he notes, “scientific research and regulatory activities that make new drugs available to society have the greatest impact when they are understood beyond specialists.” Building trust in healthcare innovation requires clear and reliable communication, not only about results, but also about how those results are generated, assessed, and translated into practice. To achieve this, Asphalion emphasises adapting messages to different audiences, explaining complex regulatory concepts in straightforward language, and focusing on real-life impact, such as how their work contributes to making treatments safer, more effective, and more accessible. At the same time, Joan points to a key challenge: “finding the right balance between clarity and precision,” particularly in a field where oversimplification can lead to misunderstandings, while technical language can limit accessibility. Asphalion addresses this by working closely across disciplines and carefully reviewing communications to ensure both accuracy and clarity. As Joan concludes, effective communication of regulatory science is essential for building trust and ensuring that the benefits of innovation reach beyond specialists, an effort they continue to advance within the SINPAIN consortium.