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.