YouTube announced Thursday it wants to help people make informed health care decisions by allowing more medical sources to share videos on its platform.  

“At YouTube, we’re working to make it easier for people to find authoritative information to help answer their questions, and we’re putting health professionals at the core of our efforts to connect people with helpful content,” the company said on its website. 

Doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals can now apply to have their video channels certified to participate in You Tube’s health features, something that, until now, has only been available to educational institutions, public health departments, hospitals and government entities.

“The reality is that the majority of healthcare decisions are made outside the doctor’s office, in the everyday lives of our patients,” YouTube said.  “That’s why YouTube Health has been working on additional ways to help doctors, nurses, mental health professionals and health care information providers to bring high quality health information into the spaces that people visit throughout their day – like their favorite video-sharing app. 

“This new step will allow us to expand to include high quality information from a wider group of health care channels,” the company said.

YouTube has been criticized in the past for being home to some misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines but has since banned the misleading information.
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