The Cultural Logic of Vaccine Refusal - Livestream

Healthcare decisions are deeply personal. Yet infectious disease reveals how our personal choices inevitably affect others. Drawing on more than a decade of research on why parents reject vaccines for their children, this talk examines perceptions of vaccines and how parents come to see vaccines as unnecessary or risky. Rather than seeing parents who reject vaccines as ignorant, anti-science, selfish, or delusional, I show how vaccine hesitancy and refusal are in many ways logical responses to the cultural pressures placed on parents. I conclude by considering why vaccines work best when used by a critical mass of people and how we might encourage a culture of shared responsibility that in turn could increase participation in public health interventions like immunization, and thus lead to healthier communities.

Speaker: Jennifer Reich, University of Colorado at Denver

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