A senior figure at the World Health Organization is advocating for a renewed and enduring partnership between global health authorities and Silicon Valley giants, lamenting what he views as a drop-off in corporate tech cooperation following the COVID-19 saga.
Andy Pattison, Team Lead for Digital Channels at the WHO, expressed frustration over what he described as a fading commitment from major tech platforms after pandemic restrictions began to lift. He proposed forming what he called “a health online collective,” aiming to replicate the level of cooperation seen during COVID-19, but on a constant, institutional basis rather than one sparked by emergencies. The goal, he explained, is to embed these relationships so deeply that a pandemic-scale digital response becomes routine, not reactive.
“The health cluster work together in the real world,” Pattison said, “but in the digital world, we tend to start again.” His vision is a standing alliance of tech companies and health authorities, ready to push unified messaging at all times, not only in crisis.
This push for persistent digital coordination follows what Pattison described as a period of unprecedented synergy between WHO and technology companies during the pandemic. According to him, these partnerships were already forming prior to COVID-19, focusing on vaccines like MMR, but rapidly escalated once the pandemic began.
Meta, formerly Facebook, played a key role, he said, helping to coordinate an initial roundtable with other major tech platforms. That meeting laid the groundwork for a surge in corporate collaboration with the WHO, from tightening “misinformation” censorship policies and inserting WHO-approved content into users’ feeds, to directly amplifying the organization’s messaging through social media.
“The range of projects was from the policy side…to working with product managers…to amplify a lot of our content through their channels,” Pattison recalled. These actions were part of a wide-ranging campaign to control the digital narrative around public health, with WHO guiding platforms on how to manage information flow.
Pattison made clear that the organization does not measure its success solely in likes or impressions. The actual goal is behavioral manipulation. “The actual proof of the pudding…is actually behavior change,” he said, underscoring the fact that influence over decision-making, not just visibility, is the metric for their online campaigns.
That change isn’t left to institutional channels alone. Pattison proudly highlighted a WHO initiative known as Fides, a program designed to enlist and amplify healthcare influencers who are willing to carry WHO talking points to their audiences. Influencers are provided with key messaging and data, and if the content “resonates,” they are encouraged to turn it into engaging posts, often dressed up with humor or emotion to ensure wider appeal.
“We work with the technology companies [to] boost those people,” he explained, referring to algorithmic promotion and visibility enhancements facilitated by social media platforms. This tight integration between private companies, government-linked institutions, and selected individuals creates a well-oiled feedback loop, where health narratives are shaped, delivered, and monitored for efficacy.
Pattison sees the influencer pipeline and Big Tech’s algorithms as powerful tools for tailoring WHO-approved narratives to local contexts, all while maintaining central message control. “It’s not WHO generically telling people about something,” he said. “It’s a creator from Uganda talking about… the latest scandal… making it relevant.”
As the WHO repositions itself for future health crises, its digital communication strategy is clear: deepen ties with tech giants, sustain control over digital health discourse, and prioritize behavior modification over mere information dissemination. The organization’s post-pandemic playbook seems less about restoring public trust through transparency and more about institutionalizing an infrastructure of message management built on censorship-era foundations.