The Battle Against Scams and Misinformation for Older Adults

Beth Hoffman, PhD, MPH  |  Janelle Christensen, PhD, MPH
University of Pittsburgh, Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences & Department of Medicine
Research!America Public Engagement Content Award, 2025–2026

Curriculum Overview

Older adults are increasingly active online and increasingly targeted by health misinformation and financial scams. Yet the professionals best positioned to help — physicians, scientists, and public health practitioners — tend to work in disease-specific silos, addressing individual pieces of misinformation rather than building the broader digital-literacy skills older adults need to protect themselves. With support from a Research!America Public Engagement Content Award, Drs. Beth Hoffman and Janelle Christensen set out to close that gap by designing, testing, and refining a train-the-trainer curriculum that equips health sciences students to teach older adults how to recognize and respond to misinformation and scams.

The curriculum covers common misinformation types (health myths, financial scams, AI-generated scams and deepfakes, and politically or religiously framed misinformation), the psychological and social drivers of belief in misinformation, and two core response techniques: pre-bunking (getting ahead of misinformation before it takes hold) and debunking using a “truth sandwich” (fact–myth–fact). It also teaches the SMELL test (Source, Motivation, Evidence, Logic, Left out) for evaluating information, and practical strategies for recognizing and responding to scams.

Curriculum Development

The curriculum below was developed via multiple iterations. After initial development, we vetted the training with four older adult community experts through an Older Adult Community Engagement Studio (OA-CES). We trained two cohorts of students and pilot tested the train-the-trainer approach by having a recipient of the initial training deliver the curriculum to older adults at a local senior living community. Along the way, the curriculum continued to be refined.

Curriculum Use

Below is both an instruction and facilitation guide and a PowerPoint file that can be downloaded for use. Please contact us with any questions!

Instruction and Facilitation Guide (PDF) →

PowerPoint Presentation: The Battle Against Scams for the Older Adult →