The threat of mpox has returned, but public knowledge about it has declined

It has been two years since the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over an outbreak of mpox, a disease endemic to Africa that had spread to scores of countries. This summer, a deadlier version of the infectious disease has spread from the Democratic Republic of Congo to other African nations, the strain that originally hit the United States has shown signs of a resurgence, and this week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a new on mpox to health care providers. But while the American public quickly learned about the disease during the summer of 2022, as the number of cases declined and media attention waned, much of that knowledge appears to have been lost, according to new from the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

In a nationally representative survey of about 1,500 U.S. empaneled adults conducted in July 2024, the policy center finds that knowledge about mpox—which increased from July to August 2022—has declined, along with fear of the disease (which was previously called monkeypox).

This wave of the Annenberg Science and Public Health (ASAPH) finds that: "The speed with which the public learned needed information about mpox in the summer of 2022 was a tribute to effective communication by the public health community," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) and director of the survey. "That same expertise should now be deployed to ensure that those at risk remember mpox's sympto.