•Numerous studies have supported YouTube as a source of both reliable and misleading information during the COVID-19 pandemic.
•Social workers, psychologists, nurses, therapists, and doctors are now eligible for the feature.
YouTube said on Thursday that it will for the first time, verify, give licenses and mark ‘Reliable’ content from certain categories of healthcare professionals and health information providers.
Numerous studies have supported YouTube as a source of both reliable and misleading information during the COVID-19 pandemic.
YouTube says is working to grow the volume of reliable health information on the platform.
This is a good move as it will cut out the increasing number of ‘YouTube doctors and therapists who are not verified or have any license and will help tackle medical misinformation.
Social workers, psychologists, nurses, therapists, and doctors are now eligible for the feature.
They will have to agree to follow the best practices for health information sharing created by the Council of Medical Specialty Societies, the National Academy of Medicine, and the World Health Organization which says information should be science-based, objective, transparent, and equitable.
However, YouTube says that users accepted into the program will be periodically reassessed to ensure that they still meet the criteria.
“Users can apply to make their channels eligible for our health product features," they said.
For now, the feature is limited to Health creators in the US who can apply from October 27th at health.youtube.
The feature may be rolled out globally at a later date.
“In the coming months, eligible channels that have applied through this process will be given a health source information panel that identifies them as a licensed healthcare professional and their videos will appear in relevant search results in health content shelves,” YouTube said in