The Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine (FPM) is partnering with its journals—Health Policy and Technology and the Postgraduate Medical Journal—to launch international awards for well-informed, clear writing on health matters in social media.

Patients, members of the public, health professionals and policymakers increasingly use social media as a source for health information and to guide important decisions on choices and actions about prevention and treatment of disease. Where the information is accurate and easy to follow, this can be very helpful. However, we are increasingly at the mercy of a spectrum of unreliability, from incomplete or inaccurate reports, to claims that inconvenient truths are ‘fake news’.

These are not new problems. …