These days, misinformation is as widespread as smartphones, and its negative impact on public health has become painfully clear in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Leading the fight against misinformation, however, is Dr. Alfred L. McAlister.
As a world-leading behavioral scientist and faculty member at the University of Texas School of Public Health, Dr. Alfred L. McAlister has worked extensively on action-oriented and policy-related research and publications concerning some of the biggest public health issues. By joining our advertising agency in Austin, Dr. McAlister will serve as a vital arm of their Health Division to help eradicate COVID-19 across the nation and support public health initiatives, such as masking, social distancing, and vaccinations.
You can read more about these efforts here.
Regarding this role, Dr. McAlister said, “I am enthusiastic about this opportunity to apply my experience in theory- and evidence-based public health communications and meet the challenge of promoting coronavirus vaccinations in these difficult times. It is exciting to work with Foundry512’s innovative leaders and I look forward to advancing behavioral science theory application to this and other public health problems.”
After receiving his Ph.D. in Behavioral Sciences from Stanford and teaching for five years at the Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. McAlister returned to Texas in 1982 and joined the University of Texas School of Public Health, where his work received grants and awards from the National Institutes of Health and the Carnegie Corporation.
Among his many achievements, Dr. McAlister pioneered a peer modeling approach that uses behavioral journalism to psychologically inoculate people against misinformation. Through peer-to-peer relationships, which are founded on trust and strengthened over time, Dr. McAlister’s model has been proven to effectively deliver public health messages with resonance and cut through the haze of misinformation.
This approach mirrors and extends the 5-1-2 framework of scaling deep relationships across professional and personal networks and through generations. By building trust and equipping people with truthful information, Foundry512 and Dr. McAlister aim to increase individual resistance to disinformation and misinformation.
We are so pleased to have Dr. McAlister on our team with his decades of experience in public health,” said Foundry512 President Aaron Henry. “Together, we are tackling the public health crisis of the century. In our earliest research, we are already seeing how his peer modeling approach is leading to record vaccination numbers. We hope to continue this very valuable work and commit our agency’s small contribution to restoring our way of life around the world.”
From right here in Austin, we are combining technology, real-life experiences, and modern advertising and communication techniques to drive home a public health campaign that scales at the last mile. The Resiliency Campaign is the home of Foundry512’s national push to eradicate COVID-19 from every community across the country.
The Resiliency Campaign in Action
Foundry512 is partnering with federal, state, county, and local agencies and government organizations to deliver The Resiliency Campaign to the communities where vaccines are needed most. No matter the community, language, political ideology, and cultural and/or religious beliefs, Dr. McAlister’s peer modeling approach and the 5-1-2 framework are designed to reach anybody, at any scale. The campaign is launching across Texas, New York, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, California, Kentucky, Illinois, Minnesota, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, and Oklahoma, and it is currently scheduled to run until 2024.