Professor of Health Communication, The University of Alabama
Executive Editor and incoming Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Health Communication
Commissioner and Co-Secretariat Lead, Nature Medicine Commission on Quality Health Information for All
Co-Chair, Health Literacy and AI Initiative, Journal of Health Communication and Taylor & Francis
Rebecca K. Ivic, PhD, is a professor and social scientist working across health communication and public health. Her research examines how health evidence becomes credible, usable, and consequential across public, population, and environmental health. Her work brings health literacy, computational and mixed methods, and public health research to the study of information quality, evidence translation, misleading information, and trust. Her scholarly record spans 150+ articles and presentations, nearly $3M in research support, and work in Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Health, the Journal of Health Communication, Health Communication, STAT, related public health outlets, and global health convenings.
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Health evidence, information quality, and public health.
Research and leadership
Dr. Ivic's research examines the conditions under which health evidence becomes credible, accessible, and usable across public health agencies, publishers, digital platforms, communities, health systems, and policy-facing institutions. Her work treats information quality, health literacy, institutional credibility, and evidence use in shaping public, population, and environmental health.
Her research uses surveys, interviews, computational text analysis, network analysis, and mixed-methods designs to study how health information gains credibility, circulates through institutions and platforms, and becomes usable for people, organizations, and public health. She works collaboratively with clinical, local, and global partners, including WHO, UNICEF, OECD, and community health centers, to connect measurement work with institutional and population health needs. Her current work includes lead development of global quality health information indicators, nutrition literacy, health-literate AI, environmental public health, online health communities, misleading information, and work on health information integrity.
Her scholarly record spans 150+ articles and presentations across health communication, public health, digital and environmental health, health informatics, health literacy, and health promotion. Her work appears across Nature Portfolio, the Journal of Health Communication, Health Communication, Health Promotion Practice, and related public health and communication outlets, and has been supported by nearly $3M in funding, including NIH/NIMHD-funded research on culturally developed living kidney donation education, HRSA-supported research on digital health promotion in rural communities, CDC-linked community engagement, and Water Institute funding on water contamination discourse. She has presented this work in global, institutional, and community-facing settings, including the World Health Summit, the World Health Summit Regional Meeting in Nairobi, meetings in Geneva, Paris, London, and Berlin, and rural communities across the global North and South.
As Executive Editor of the Journal of Health Communication, Dr. Ivic holds a senior editorial role in an international venue for research connecting communication, public health, and health systems. Her international work includes service as a Commissioner and Co-Secretariat Lead for the Nature Medicine Commission on Quality Health Information for All, membership in the WHO Health Information Integrity Alliance, and leadership of the first WHO collaborative agreement in the state of Alabama, creating a formal pathway for high-level global partnership on health information integrity, digital communication, and quality health information.
Health Literacy and AI Initiative
Journal of Health Communication
The Journal of Health Communication Health Literacy and AI Initiative is a three-year global initiative co-chaired by Dr. Rebecca Ivic and Dr. Saskia De Gani at Careum Stiftung. It brings health literacy scholarship into direct conversation with artificial intelligence, evidence use, health information integrity, and public and population health.
Building on more than three decades of health literacy scholarship in the Journal, the initiative will convene an international group of Fellows to expand the field's agenda for health-literate AI: strengthening measurement approaches, examining risk and crisis contexts, and advancing scholarship that can inform research, policy, public health, publishing, and practice. Taylor & Francis will support the initiative through its publishing program, journal network, dissemination channels, convening support, and book-development pathways.
Domains, indicators, measures, and evaluation approaches for assessing whether AI-mediated health information is understandable, accessible, usable, interpretable, and actionable.
Scholarship on how health-literate AI can support clear, credible, and equitable communication in public health emergencies, environmental threats, and other high-stakes settings.
Invited publications, Fellows, webinars, roundtables, a curated Taylor & Francis Online collection, and a forward agenda for research, policy, publishing, and practice.
Research program
Development and application of criteria and indicators for assessing whether health information is credible, transparent, accessible, relevant, and usable across publishers, platforms, health organizations, and public health systems.
Examples include the Nature Health global survey on trust, digital health literacy, and health information quality, along with indicator work through the Nature Medicine Commission.
Studies of how health evidence is translated into information that patients, clinicians, organizations, and public agencies can understand, evaluate, and use in health and policy decision-making.
Related outputs include Building Health Literate Artificial Intelligence in Nature Human Behaviour and invited engagements on quality health information in Nairobi, Berlin, and Paris.
Research on how health claims, misleading information, and public narratives circulate through social platforms, organizational channels, campaigns, environmental public health contexts, and search environments.
Related studies examine mental health information on social media and Reddit-based health discourse.
Computational text analysis, network analysis, surveys, mixed-methods designs, and qualitative inquiry used to measure information quality, analyze trust and literacy data, map platform content and disciplinary networks, and examine how evidence is interpreted and used across health information systems.
This methodological work appears in funded and commissioned studies using surveys, interviews, computational text analysis, and indicator development, alongside network analysis of the health communication field in the Journal of Health Communication.
Featured publications
Selected invited lectures and policy convenings
Recent invited talks bring this research into global, institutional, publishing, and community-facing settings.
Presented in the session Trust in Science: Advancing Quality Health Information in the Age of Digital Health, with attention to Kenyan public health priorities.
Conference presentation on indicators, economic value, and global developments in quality health information.
Strategic dialogue on data integration, communication research, and methods for estimating the societal costs of poor-quality information.
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