Vaccine hesitancy and secondary risks

• Main Authors: CUMMINGS, Christopher L., ROSENTHAL, Sonny
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2021
• Subjects: Health Communication; Public Health
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/211
• Institution: Singapore Management University

One facet of pandemic preparedness and resiliency planning is to anticipate that a significant portion of the population will not understand, or be willing, to adopt advocated risk mitigation responses. Communication plays a central and vital role in creating salience and stoking motivations to respond effectively to pandemics and other public health crises. Widespread adoption of variolation, inoculation, and vaccination has historically improved community resilience to disease, but with limited effectiveness due to a growing community who are unwilling to vaccinate. Vaccine hesitancy is a decision-making outcome stemming from diverse motives and is often related to a lack of vaccine confidence and perceived risks. In the race to develop vaccines to mitigate pandemic risks, there is a need to understand factors influencing vaccine hesitancy. Secondary risk theory (SRT) is a useful framework to explain this, accounting for concerns about vaccine efficacy and safety. This chapter unpacks how vaccine hesitancy should be of critical concern to health and risk communicators and introduces SRT as a foundational theoretical framework to explain and predict vaccination decisions.