This is Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley. There's a lot to dislike and distrust about the American health care system.

We know about disparities in care quality, in the ability to access care and in education about health.

The anti-Vax or vaccine skeptical movement

is growing faster than ever in the modern history of vaccines.

And a lot of us have a hard time

dredging up any sympathy for those people but what if they're responding to the

frustrations and fears that we all have about medical care.

For all of us, it's important to speak

from a place of empathy and try to understand

it's not just the characterizations that we see in the news,

or it's not just the worst case scenario that we think of

when we think of people asserting certain viewpoints.

Joanna Richland of the University of Maine joins Hear Me Out in just a moment.

Stay with us.

Welcome back to Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley.

More Americans now oppose vaccine requirements for school children. Not a majority, but more. Data from the Pew Center last year found that between October 2019 to March of 2023, the number of parents who think vaccines should

be optional went up.

To be clear, the increase was modest going from 16% to 28% of all Americans surveyed and again the vast majority of Americans believe vaccines should be mandatory in public schools.

Still, the results look different when sorted for a political

party. In recent years, the percentage of self-described conservatives who oppose

vaccine requirements more than doubled. to one. And look, this is a show

about debating but there is no debate that vaccines work. The ones we require children

...