Can psychology boost vaccination rates?

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the 1950s a batch of polio vaccine in the US was made badly, resulting in 10 deaths and the permanent paralysis of 164 people. Paul Offit, a paediatrician in Philadelphia, says the disaster did not turn people away from vaccines. He believes that current vaccine hesitancy needs to be tackled online - where fake news spreads quickly. The German state of Brandenburg wants to make pre-school vaccinations compulsory - like neighbouring France and Italy - because immunisation rates there dropped to 73%. But some doctors believe busy parents can instead be gently persuaded to take up vaccines. Perhaps this is where psychological research can play a role. Sander van der Linden, Director of the Cambridge Social Decision Making Lab in the UK, is working on an online game which "inoculates" people against fake news - by showing them how they can be manipulated online. He says the effects last about 6 weeks - so a "booster" may be necessary. Head of the Vaccine Confidence Project Heidi Larson applauds 18 year old American Ethan Lindenberger who decided to get vaccinated despite his own mother's anti-vax views which he says she got from reading church and internet anti-vaccination groups rather than from the medical profession. Producer: Paula McGrath Picture: A vial of measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and an information sheet, Boston Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts February 26, 2015. Credit: Reuters / Brian Snyder / File Photo

Transcript

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0:31.5	Hi there, I'm Claudia Hammond, and this is the podcast Discovery from the BBC.
0:36.0	Today we're looking at vaccination as you've been hearing on the BBC in the last week in pockets of some countries such as the US, France and Italy, a minority of people
0:45.3	are deciding not to get their children vaccinated despite the evidence.
0:49.2	You only have to look online to find plenty of misinformation about vaccines and in this
0:54.2	program we're asking how best to counter it. This war is being fought in social media
0:58.3	so I think we have to as public health officials and child advocates do everything we can to try and get good
1:04.7	information to that venue, but that's where the war is being fluent.
1:08.3	And does compulsory vaccination work or are there better ways of gently encouraging people to get their children
1:14.3	vaccinated? First I want to take a moment to go back in time. Vaccines have a good
1:19.6	safety record but there have been occasional incidents where things have
1:23.4	gone very wrong. Now they don't always lead to the public turning against
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