BOSTON — Mike Varshavski, a family physician and content creator who goes by Doctor Mike on YouTube, has made it his mission to combat medical misinformation. He’s attracted 14 million followers by communicating both clearly and entertainingly. He wishes leaders in medicine like the American Medical Association would do the same, he told attendees at the STAT Summit on Wednesday.
While they mean well, he said they haven’t figured out how to reach a mass audience. One example: In a recent video, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sat back in his chair and claimed that doctors are profiting from keeping Americans sick. “And the AMA — which is the group that supposedly stands up for the physicians in America — issues a strongly worded tweet that reaches 5,000 people,” Varshavski said. “Or they get the president of the AMA to sit in front of a webcam with terrible audio, the screen reflecting in the glasses with no lighting, to also make a response video reading a script from a screen.”
Earlier in the day, former high-ranking Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official Dan Jernigan, who resigned in August, also emphasized that professional medical organizations need to do more to counter unreliable statements from administration officials.
Criticism of the country’s leading professional medical group is part of a wave of resistance from physicians to its historically quiet, behind-the-scenes advocacy strategy. Younger physicians in particular have petitioned AMA leaders to be more vocal about the way the Trump administration has pushed policies that aren’t adequately based on science or existing research. Varshavski also believes the group needs to be more approachable in its communication.
“It’s not about putting on fancy outfits, it’s about being presentable [and] realizing that fancy cameras are no longer just for the top tier studios in Hollywood … I know how much AMA fees are each year and I know they can afford that,” Varshavski said. He believes that the administration’s high-quality videos and relaxed manner of speaking come off as more trustworthy to the general public or those who are less informed on the science. (The AMA declined to comment on Varshavaski’s remarks.)
Before the Trump administration, federal health agencies weren’t successfully communicating with viewers either, Varshavski said. “How many times would I scroll past a CDC post with three likes on it? It’s literally the equivalent of not doing it,” he said. “Because if three people are seeing it, you’re just not doing anything valuable.”
For years, there’s been a lack of “evidence-based voices online,” Varshavski argued, which left “a gap filled by grifters.” In the pandemic, he found this meant there weren’t enough doctors to fact check the rapidly spreading misinformation about the disease, how it spreads, and the vaccines.
“As a result? People were confused. People were making bad decisions,” he said. Those same people have learned how to use social media platforms “while we all raise our noses in the health care community and say ‘we’re above this.’”
Varshavski emphasized the value of infusing comedy and silliness into his “Doctor Mike” channel to encourage the platform’s algorithm to continue previewing his more serious content to potential viewers. A given comedic video can reach 5 or 10 million viewers. “Had I not made that silly video, they would be completely unaware of the fact that there was misinformation being shared with them at the highest levels,” he said.
In this way, he looks to non-medical YouTube creators with huge followings like MrBeast for inspiration. “How do we crowbar some scientific education into these topics so that people are saying, ‘Wow, I normally watch MrBeast, but I could totally watch a Doctor Mike video,’” he said. Still, he is eager for public health leaders to join him in effectively bringing accurate medical information to the public: “I feel like my channel is just scratching the surface,” he said.
