2025 Commencement Keynote Address by Dr. Jonathan Fielding
The 2025 keynote commencement address that follows was written and delivered by Dr. Jonathan Fielding -- distinguished professor of health policy and management and of pediatrics in the Schools of Public Health and Medicine at UCLA -- at UCLA's Royce Hall on Friday, June 13, 2025 during the UCLA Jonathan and Karin Fielding School of Public Health 2025 Commencement Ceremony.
Dean Brookmeyer, thank you for that blush-inducing introduction.
But today is not about me, it’s about the exceptional students in this graduating class and those who have supported them – their families and friends - our incredible faculty and staff.
Today, also, the words of Charles Dickens come to mind – “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
You are poised and prepared to go out and make the world a better, healthier place – thus the best of times.
And yet, just a few miles away our communities are being threatened, we live in fear for ourselves and those we care about – thus the worst of times.
Our role as Public Health professionals is now more essential than ever.
And so much of what we are seeing today is the product of a growing but often underappreciated threat that affects every disease, injury and risk factor category.
A threat that has the potential to erode public trust in our field.
A threat that undermines the very core of our work as public health professionals.
This threat is disinformation.
Disinformation is false information created and repeatedly amplified to deliberately mislead people, often for political, financial or ideological gain.
It is designed to exploit existing fears, beliefs and divisions in our society by spewing out intentionally wrong information, often in subtle, clever ways.
It spreads quickly and widely via social media algorithms, AI, deep fakes, influencers, radio and television, and political maneuvering.
The explosion of disinformation makes a mockery of the basic rules of evidence for which interventions are properly considered to be effective.
In the U.S., the poster child for disinformation is the tobacco industry effort, beginning in the 1950s, to discredit the growing epidemiologic evidence linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer and other health problems.
In addition to selling cigarettes, tobacco companies banded together and hired a high-profile public relations firm to sell the subtle idea that there was not a consensus that smoking caused lung cancer, despite growing medical evidence to the contrary.
Big tobacco spent many millions on billboard, print and television advertising over three decades to promote smoking to all segments of society – men, women, ethnic and racial groups – and even children, as future smokers.
They used celebrities, animation, and the Marlboro Man, to show that smoking was sophisticated, fun, glamorous and manly.
Doctors were prominently featured in these ads. They were used to promote the industry message that cigarettes were safe and to cast doubt on the linkage between smoking and lung cancer.
The tobacco industry was finally hobbled in its efforts to spread disinformation about smoking with the release of the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health.
The report clearly exposed the link between smoking and lung cancer and other serious diseases.
Starting a year later, a health warning was required on every pack of cigarettes.
Eventually, leaks from within the industry and litigation by 46 states, five US territories and the District of Columbia made clear that the industry targeted ads to teenagers and young children and manipulated nicotine levels to increase addiction.
Yet, it wasn’t until 1988 that litigation led to a master settlement agreement. Under this agreement the tobacco companies paid more than $260 billion to the states and agreed to marketing restrictions. The tobacco companies were also required to make public millions of pages of internal documents, including the health effects of tobacco products, manipulations of data, and marketing strategies.
Eventually Congress passed a law banning cigarette ads on radio and television.
On January 2, 1971, the last legal TV cigarette ad aired on The Tonight Show. It was a Virginia Slims commercial that subtly suggested that smoking helps women lose weight.
Did public health win the battle over smoking disinformation? The answer is yes, but it took several decades.
In 1998 approximately 24 percent of adults smoked. Today the rate is around 11 percent. Among middle and high school students, the 1988 rate was approximately 36%; today it is only about 2 percent.
But along the way millions of lives were shortened by smoking related cancers, as well as a range of other respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. And the battle is not over, as promoters of cannabis and vaping are still after our youth.
A more recent example of disinformation is the attack on the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, known as the MMR vaccine.
In 1988, The Lancet – a respected British medical journal – published the results of a study by Andrew Wakefield, a British physician.
The study purported to show that MMR vaccination caused autism in children. But it turns out that Wakefield had many serious conflicts of interest that he never disclosed – including involvement in a pending lawsuit against the manufacturers of the MMR vaccine.
In 2010, The Lancet retracted the article, stating it was “utterly false” and suggested that portions of it were “intentionally misrepresented.”
Although many subsequent large, and well-designed studies have shown no link between the vaccine and autism, Wakefield’s study – and the seeds of false information he planted – contributed to the vaccine hesitancy and the resurgence of measles we see today.
But I would argue that one of the greatest threats of disinformation in public health is not related to a single disease, nor does it affect only one slice of our population.
In fact, it affects every human being. And as such is an existential threat to life on our small planet, and we only get one chance to tame it.
And that threat is disinformation around climate change and global warming.
The stakes are high... the arguments heated... and the debate around the causes of climate change and the opportunities to slow global warming are raucous. Many interested parties have entered the fray.
But one fact is truly disturbing. Disinformation is rampant.
Climate disinformation generally comes from politicians, fossil fuel–aligned interest groups, and ideologically motivated media sources.
It undermines both climate policy and public health.
The fossil fuel industry has adopted many of the strategies employed in the tobacco wars, including advertising themselves as climate friendly, misrepresenting science, and selectively using data.
Some climate deniers say that climate change is a complete hoax. Others claim that global warming is part of a natural weather cycle and is unrelated to human activity. Almost all spread disinformation that climate change isn’t a serious health threat.
None of these claims is true, but this type of disinformation reduces support for taking necessary action to combat climate change. It supports the fossil fuel industry’s contention that their products are not the major cause of climate change.
Let there be no doubt that climate change is the principal cause of planetary warming and the risk of extinction of our entire species.
Finally, there is another distressing form of disinformation. It occurs when vital and important data are modified or even eliminated outright to support a particular view.
Beginning in late January of this year, the current administration removed or modified more than 8000 web pages and approximately 3000 datasets from various federal agencies.
One of the most affected agencies is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which saw 3000 pages altered or removed.
The stated objective of these actions was to eliminate references to gender identity; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; and woke science – and to restore so-called ‘scientific objectivity’ by removing what they claim is ‘activist’ language.
But I suspect the real purpose was to erase and undermine health equity efforts from federal data.
Disinformation doesn’t just distort facts, but it also damages the public’s trust in public health and fuels polarization and extremism.
No matter what path you take in your public health careers, I urge you to make challenging disinformation among your top priorities.
You are rigorously educated. Now, use your education to seek the truth and share the truth.
- Challenge and debunk erroneous information and support the necessary studies to resolve important uncertainties.
- Warn others about the damage caused by conspiracy theories, charlatans, and evidence-free zones.
- Engage with the political system. America’s success is not about rampant individualism, but about how we all work together as a community to serve our common interests and needs.
- Work at all levels – local, state, national and international – to protect communities now... and mankind in the future.
And remember, public health has always had its enemies, and they are often related to those who depend on disinformation to make their case and reap economic benefit.
But public health deserves to be the source of accurate, timely and actionable information. I have no doubt that you will be respected truthtellers and difference-makers.
Our collective future depends on it.