Building Confidence in Vaccines

Abstract

Despite significant efforts by governments, organizations and individuals to maintain public trust in vaccines, concerns persist and threaten to undermine the effectiveness of immunization programs. Vaccine advocates have traditionally focused on education based on evidence to address vaccine concerns and hesitancy. However, being informed of the facts about immunization does not always translate into support for immunization. While many are persuaded by scientific evidence, others are more influenced by cognitive shortcuts, beliefs, societal pressure and the media, with the latter group more likely to hesitate over immunization. Understanding evidence from the behaviour sciences opens new doors to better support individual decision-making about immunization. Drawing on heuristics, this overview explores how individuals find, process and utilize vaccine information and the role health care professionals and society can play in vaccine decision-making. Traditional, evidence-based approaches aimed at staunching the erosion of public confidence in vaccines are proving inadequate and expensive. Enhancing public confidence in vaccines will be complex, necessitating a much wider range of strategies than currently used. Success will require a shift in how the public, health care professionals and media are informed and educated about vaccine benefits, risks and safety; considerable introspection and change in current academic and vaccine decision-making practices; development of proactive strategies to broadly address current and potential future concerns, as well as targeted interventions such as programs to address pain with immunization. This overview outlines ten such opportunities for change to improve vaccine confidence.

Immunology beliefs as a factor in vaccine opposition among complementary and alternative medical providers

“… 18 The misinformed perception provides an internally consistent logic. That is, the belief in an undeveloped immune system and a porous BBB strongly “anchor”—according to the heuristic model outlined by Smith et al 48 —the judgment that babies will be harmed when assaulted by what these providers believe to be too many vaccines. When confidently expressed by a valued provider, this and similar views may sound to parents as if they have scientific validity.…”

“…Such efforts should especially include an explanation of herd immunity. 48 , 50 Prior work suggests that vaccine beliefs do indeed begin to crystalize during the parent(s) first pregnancy, at which point they begin to access health networks for relevant perspectives. 51 Large-scale surveys of the CAM population could provide an estimate of the contributions to public vaccine opposition attributable to conditional and vaccine-opposing CAM providers and could help to determine how much reach such an intervention could have.…”

The Impact of Online Media on Parents’ Attitudes toward Vaccination of Children—Social Marketing and Public Health

“…Although there is a certain number of studies on trust in vaccines [ 18 , 19 , 20 ], it is often pointed out that there is a lack of such research, especially in less developed countries, which is why this issue continues to cause a lot of controversy. Namely, despite the scientific consensus that vaccines are safe and effective, there are still unconfirmed claims that doubt their safety [ 21 ].…”

Engager le dialogue avec les parents réticents : la perspective du clinicien

“…Les praticiens des soins de santé qui sont également des dispensateurs de vaccins doivent avoir recours à des techniques d'intervention physique et d'injection bien connues, qui atténuent la douleur 2 . On peut facilement les intégrer dans la pratique clinique sans y investir trop de temps et d'argent (Taddio et coll., 2009;Smith, Appleton et MacDonald, 2013;Taddio et coll., 2010). Les professionnels doivent rassurer les parents, en leur indiquant que tous les moyens seront pris pour réduire au minimum la douleur pour l'enfant.…”