Moderating Health Discussions Online
If you run a discussion space where health topics come up, you need to carefully develop some best practices.
The first rule needs to be that no one can stand on supposed medical credentials and trying to bully others or somehow enforce a particular treatment outcome is absolutely against the rules.
The reason is that if it's a discussion space, you likely cannot verify professional credentials for most members. If you can verify medical credentials, instead of running a free discussion space, you could run a fee-based remote medical consultation business and genuinely provide medical care online.
If you aren't verifying medical credentials, then they can't count as a reason to take one person's advice over another because anyone can lie and claim they have medical credentials they don't have or even carefully frame real medical credentials in a misleading manner that makes them sound more expert than they really are. A vague claim like primary care provider may be technically true and may sound to some people like "I'm a DOCTOR!" and may not mean that at all while technically not lying.
I was in the insurance industry. "Provider" is a generic term for the medical personnel that took care of them and may not mean doctor. It could mean chiropractor, nurse or nurse practitioner, among other things. While all of these titles involve medical training and licensing, they aren't equally knowledgeable or respected.
You need to enforce this rule even in cases where some members know each other in person and therefore know that X person really is a medical professional, if only because it opens the door to con artists who are lying about it for some reason. Keep the focus on information and off of weirdo internet social dynamics.
Some best practices:
1. Speak from firsthand experience.
2. Or cite your sources.
If someone really is a medical professional and is concerned about the quality of information being put out, they should have no problem finding solid information to link out to in order to elevate the discussion without trying to stand on unverified credentials or bullying anyone.
Another best practice:
Do NOT "give advice." Instead, keep it informational.
You cannot reasonably give medical advice on the internet to someone whose medical records you have not seen, etc. You can inform and educate in hopes of helping people make better health decisions.
Home remedies for health issues can be reasonably discussed in a useful fashion as long as no one tries to insist it's their way or the highway. Just keep it informational and let the OP make their own decisions.
Do not try to dictate a particular outcome or decision. Shut down any attempts to do so.
People should be encouraged to list provisos, such as possible side effects, indications it's time to stop this treatment or rules of thumb for dosing.
This helps keep things safe, both because it's essential safety info and because a lot of people will just bail on the idea of alternative remedies when informed there are provisos. That's possibly the single best way to get flakey people to actually get medical care and give up on their fantasies of some "all natural, no side effects" magical solution.
It's fine for one of those provisos to be something like "X detail is the point at which you should probably seek professional medical care." But do not let some crusader try to prevent reasonable discussion of home remedies in the name of supposed safety concerns.
There are lots of people in the world who turn to the internet for useful health info because they legitimately have barriers to seeking professional medical care or because they have problems the medical industry hasn't satisfactorily solved.
They may be poor. They may live in a rural area far from the nearest professional medical personnel such that seeking medical care is a hardship reserved for only serious issues they can't handle on their own. They may have other concerns they don't want to mention, such as being an illegal immigrant without insurance or taking illicit drugs.
Or even "all of the above."
Making it impossible for them to engage in useful discussion with people online will not magically solve those problems, so it most likely will not actually improve their safety to insist they can only have this kind of discussion with people they know in meat space or actual medical personnel. If those options were adequately meeting their needs, they probably would not be turning to random internet strangers to begin with.
Do feel comfortable interceding in situations that you think are genuinely problematic to discuss. ("No, we are not going to discuss how to perform a coat hanger abortion. Sorry. DELETE.")
But with some reasonable rules in place, many health issues and home remedies for them can be safely discussed and many people very much need and want to be able to have such discussions.
