Data Hero

Homewood resident and UAB doctor nominated for award for information efforts

A local doctor living in Homewood has faced two battles since March 2020: Not only does she battle the COVID-19 pandemic at work as an infectious diseases doctor at UAB, but she also fights against coronavirus-related misinformation on Facebook when she gets home.

Her Facebook page, called Dr. Ellen Eaton Coronavirus Updates, has gained more than 13,000 followers since Eaton began posting updates at the beginning of 2020. Then in February 2021, she was nominated for a COVID-19 Data Hero award, which is presented by The Data Access, Transparency and Advocacy (DATA) Group at dataheroawards.org.

‘Moral obligation’

Eaton doesn’t like social media. In fact, she said she dreams of the day she can delete the Facebook page.

“I’m not an influencer, I’m not a blogger, and this is not really fun to me,” she said. “I just feel a moral obligation to do it.”

Looking back at the spring of 2020, she said she remembers there being so much uncertainty. She remembers people not understanding how the virus was spread, how to test people and more. People began to listen to the opinions of people who didn’t have a medical background, she said.

She started posting coronavirus information on her personal Facebook page because she felt there was a void of good data, she said. Early on, this was snippets about hand hygiene and the importance of staying at home. The conversation eventually centered around masking and vaccinations.

As her friends began reposting her information, strangers began requesting to be friends with Eaton on Facebook. Her friend, who owns a photography business, showed Eaton how to create a professional Facebook page so that people could follow Eaton’s coronavirus updates without also seeing photos of her children.

“I personally could not continue to watch people share memes about ‘This is just the flu,’ memes about body counts being over counted,” she said.

Eaton is a physician researcher, and her research is focused on the intersection of mental health and infectious diseases. She focuses on addiction, specifically opioids, and HIV.

“A lot of what we know about HIV and tuberculosis and Hepatitis C and all these other infections I’ve studied is the foundation for what I’ve seen and learned about COVID-19,” she said. “There’s a ton of overlap between the research I do around mental health and HIV and what we’ve seen play out in, for example, rural America with the coronavirus.”

She directs an opioid treatment clinic at the UAB 1917 HIV clinic, which is the largest HIV health care unit in Alabama and one of the country’s leading HIV clinics. Her patients all have HIV and opioid use disorders, primarily heroin and fentanyl.

Because of her background, her public health messaging from the beginning has been about protecting the vulnerable, such as elderly people or people experiencing homelessness, she said.

“A lot of my messaging about protecting our vulnerable was very much inspired by what I was seeing in my clinic,” she said. “For example, a lot of the messaging around Safer at Home was like, ‘Please stay home from this huge party so that I can keep my clinic open and care for patients who may not survive this pandemic without medical care.’ So that’s how my day-to-day job inspired my messaging.”

Addressing uncertainty

She encountered some big surprises along the way, she said. As an infectious diseases doctor, people have reached out to Eaton for a wide range of infections, even things like skin rashes. But when the coronavirus pandemic hit, Eaton said it seemed like people stopped trusting the experts.

“That continues to baffle me,” she said. “Even people who are close to me who know my training, who know I have degrees in public health and infectious diseases and who ask me a number of questions during flu season, no longer wanted to know my thoughts on the coronavirus.

“They were following maybe a very vocal person on social media or a very vocal politician, and frankly, a lot of the messaging was dangerous.”

Whenever people “trolled” her page by posting mean or misinformative comments, Eaton said she would click on their Facebook profile and discover the person was in a career field completely different from medicine. “Give me a break,” she would say, laughing.

Convincing the public to wear a mask continues to be a challenge, she said.

“It’s a minority, but it’s a very loud minority of people who still think there is not good data around masking,” she said. “You can show them a laundry list of peer-reviewed journals by people who literally have dedicated their careers to coronaviruses in general, and they still will not want that expert’s opinion because they know someone on Facebook who shared an article that is misleading.”

The Homewood Star conducted a survey and collected data about COVID-19 perceptions in Homewood. The data seem to suggest that where people get their information matters, and those who receive information from friends and family were the least likely to say they think masks prevent the spread of COVID-19. This is demonstrated in the charts on this page.

When Eaton realized she was nominated for the Data Hero Award, she said it felt like a pat on the back after spending a year trying to keep the community informed, healthy and safe.

“Human nature is we hear the negative more than the positive — it weighs more heavily,” she said. “It feels like I’m the COVID police, and that people view me as a Negative Nelly or someone who spoils the fun because I don’t want people to gather.

“So when you do get these little pats on the back, it does go a long way for encouragement and reminds you why you did this. Someone thought I made a difference.”

One of the page’s top fans, Ericka Jackson, said she is a mom with multiple preexisting conditions and is raising a child who has a “concerning” history with respiratory illnesses. Being inundated with misinformation online made the pandemic even scarier, she said, until a friend recommended she follow Eaton’s page.

“People warned me not to get overwhelmed with all the scary COVID headlines – but I appreciated that Dr. Eaton’s posts were well researched and informative,” Jackson said. “Knowledge is power, and reading the latest news, vetted by a medical expert, helped me understand how to mitigate the risks for myself and my family.”

There have been times during the pandemic that Jackson said she considered letting her guard down because she felt she was the only one taking it seriously. Then she would get an update from Eaton’s page.

“Seeing her other followers’ comments helped me know I wasn’t alone, and reading her current posts helped me keep tabs on how serious the situation still was,” Jackson said. “I knew that as a local physician, she was seeing things the public wasn’t. I also knew that her only ‘agenda’ was to prevent the spread of a vicious virus and to help keep us all safe.”

Looking ahead

The page won’t last forever. Once everyone in the community has access to the vaccine, Eaton said she feels like it will be time to shut it down.

Eaton predicts many people in Homewood will want the vaccine, she said. In her social circles and in her patients, she has seen previously hesitant groups become more accepting about the vaccine, she said. In the survey conducted by The Homewood Star, 89.7% of Homewood respondents said they either already had one dose of the vaccine or said they would get vaccinated as soon as it was available to them. This survey closed April 5, so the numbers could change by the time this issue comes out.

“It’s really encouraging,” she said. “Now that more and more people are vaccinated, I’m not having to post as much. It’s a relief, because it’s been a really heavy year.”

Until that time, you can find her page by searching for Dr. Ellen Eaton Coronavirus Updates on Facebook.

How do people living in Homewood perceive the pandemic?

The Homewood Star published an online survey that was open for responses from March 25 to April 5. Out of 1,309 people who responded to our survey via Google Forms, 365 people said they lived in Homewood. The graphs below illustrate only Homewood residents’ responses.