A team ethnography on vaccine hesitancy in Europe DRAFT (original) (raw)
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Are There Doctors Who Don't Believe in the Vaccine: Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis
2021
This research aims to shed some light on one of the facets of how the information flow including that in the media relates to one's real vaccine hesitancy. Specifically, we are interested in the possible input of medical experts' opinions on formation of people's attitude towards vaccine hesitancy. Phenomenology was chosen as the methodological and epistemological base for the study. The obtained description of the experience and attitudes of medical workers who feel vaccine hesitancy can contribute to further studies of challenges spawned not only by the current COVID-19 pandemic but can also provide hints in other situations of social turmoil.
2020
Abstract: Vaccine hesitancy has been proven to be a major obstacle in the fight against communicable diseases. My research is an ethnographic exploration of a group of public health professionals who are tasked with safeguarding the health of South African populations against the spread of communicable diseases. My study is relatively nascent in the South African context, as many studies of vaccine hesitancy have focused on ‘studying down’ parents, caregivers and sometimes healthcare workers. While important, these studies have left important gaps in understanding the multifaceted phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy, particularly in relation to the role of institutions and public health agencies. My ethnography contributes to this identified gap. Based on six months of fieldwork, centred at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), I tracked public health professionals from the NICD and Department of Health (DoH) as they carried out a Vaccine Derived Polio Virus (VDPV) ou...
'MMR talk' and vaccination choices: An ethnographic study in Brighton
In the context of the high-profile controversy that has unfolded in the UK around the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and its possible adverse effects, this paper explores how parents in Brighton, southern England, are thinking about MMR for their own children. Research focusing on parents' engagement with MMR has been dominated by analysis of the proximate influences on their choices, and in particular scientific and media information, which have led health policy to focus on information and education campaigns. This paper reports ethnographic work including narratives by mothers in Brighton. Our work questions such reasoning in showing how wider personal and social issues shape parents' immunisation actions. The narratives by mothers show how practices around MMR are shaped by personal histories, by birth experiences and related feelings of control, by family health histories, by their readings of their child's health and particular strengths and vulnerabilities, by particular engagements with health services, by processes building or undermining confidence, and by friendships and conversations with others, which are themselves shaped by wider social differences and transformations. Although many see vaccination as a personal decision which must respond to the particularities of a child's immune system, 'MMR talk', which affirms these conceptualisations, has become a social phenomenon in itself. These perspectives suggest ways in which people's engagements with MMR reflect wider changes in their relations with science and the state.
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies, 2023
Vaccine hesitancy constitutes a pressing social issue. Media and institutions frequently portray vaccine-hesitant parents as ignorant and anti-scientific. This exploratory study – conducted in the Autonomous Province of Trento (Italy) in 2018 – analyses organized parents opposing the reinforcement of childhood vaccination mandates. Semi-structured interviews with vaccine-hesitant parents and physicians with experience with vaccine-hesitant patients, and participant observation were conducted to understand the perceptions of childhood vaccination mandates, focusing on narratives regarding the role played by science and scientific experts in the vaccine debate. Analysed through the lens of sociology of health and Science and Technology Studies, results highlight that vaccine hesitancy cannot be reduced to anti-scientific attitudes. Hesitant parents’ vaccination decisions are based on a different perspective of their children’s health and on alternative forms of expertise; there are persistent weaknesses in the doctor-patient and expert-citizen relationship in a deeply dualistic vaccine-related debate; and there is the need for a dialogue between institutions and vaccine-hesitant parents.
Responsibility, Agency and Memory: On the production of attitudes toward vaccinations
This thesis is the product of three months of research and analysis of the processes underlying the production of attitudes toward vaccinations. In order to understand this complex network, this research analyses how different epistemologies and processes of professional socialisation, the individual/collective dyad with its understandings of concepts of ‘agency’ and ‘responsibility’, and memories, influence the production of attitudes toward vaccines and vaccination practices. By analysing the data gathered through the interviews of two different groups of people – accordingly, graduate students in anthropology and recently graduates in medicine – I will argue that the numerous elements that play a role in shaping and influencing attitudes toward vaccinations are entangled with each other, and that therefore they should be considered as part of a broader assemblage. Indeed, I will conclude that vaccination practices should be considered as a collectivising moment, in which notions of ‘responsibility’ and ‘agency’, the ‘individual’ and ‘collective’, are not understood in their excluding and dualistic element. The practice of vaccination should, indeed, work for the construction of a collective memory that would eventually shape and influence attitudes towards vaccines.
Frontiers in Public Health, 2022
Background: Vaccination is widespread in Western countries and, overall, there is a high vaccination rate. However, immunization is still an enduring challenge. In recent years, the number of parents who choose to delay or refuse vaccines has risen. Objectives: () to identify the perceptions and attitudes of hesitant and antivaccination parents regarding vaccination in general, and vaccinating their children in particular and; () to describe the responses of potential participants to the request to participate in academic research regarding their perceptions and attitudes on the subject of vaccines. Methods: The research employs the qualitative hermeneutic phenomenological method using two research tools: () in-depth interviews with hesitant and anti-vaccination Jewish parents in Israel; and () the researchers' field notes from this study process, which describe the responses of potential participants to the request to participate in this academic research. Results: The main findings indicate that while most of the interviewees admit to the e cacy of vaccines in preventing diseases, they oppose the way in which vaccines are promoted-based on providing partial information and disregarding parents' concerns and questions. Therefore, they demand transparency about the e cacy and safety of vaccines. The findings also point to a paradoxical finding. On the one hand, these groups claim that Frontiers in Public Health frontiersin.org Hijazi et al.. /fpubh.. health organizations do not understand their position, referring to them as "science-deniers", even though they are not. On the other hand, these parents choose to refrain from participating in scientific studies and voicing their opinions, thereby perpetuating the situation of being misunderstood. Conclusion: Hesitant and anti-vaccination groups express mistrust in academic institutions and health organizations. Therefore, an e ective dialogue that would include hesitant and anti-vaccination groups, the academy, and health organizations may contribute to a better understanding of the barriers that prevent these groups from getting vaccinated or vaccinating their children and promote public health.
Journey to vaccination: a protocol for a multinational qualitative study
BMJ open, 2014
In the past two decades, childhood vaccination coverage has increased dramatically, averting an estimated 2-3 million deaths per year. Adult vaccination coverage, however, remains inconsistently recorded and substandard. Although structural barriers are known to limit coverage, social and psychological factors can also affect vaccine uptake. Previous qualitative studies have explored beliefs, attitudes and preferences associated with seasonal influenza (flu) vaccination uptake, yet little research has investigated how participants' context and experiences influence their vaccination decision-making process over time. This paper aims to provide a detailed account of a mixed methods approach designed to understand the wider constellation of social and psychological factors likely to influence adult vaccination decisions, as well as the context in which these decisions take place, in the USA, the UK, France, India, China and Brazil. We employ a combination of qualitative interviewi...
Are There Doctors Who Don’t Believe in Vaccine: Context for Phenomenological Study
Academia Letters, 2021
The situation with COVID-19 is still a challenge for the world. It afflicts almost all areas of human wellbeing-political, social, psychological, etc. This makes it a problem far wider than a medical one. Yet, the role of medicine is crucial in the projective resolution of the crisis, especially when vaccination has become available. This article aims to present a preliminary analysis of the context of a more extensive study in progress now. The main objective of the bigger study is to shed some light on the problem with vaccination hesitancy in Russia. For now, we may call the vaccination campaign a failure-the official website dedicated to Sputnik V vaccine informs us that by July 7, 2021, only 12,58 % of the population of Russia has been vaccinated (Gam Kovid Vak, 2021). The Russian government tries to improve the situation by implementing an equivocal policy. On one hand, the vaccination is voluntary, on the other-one could be deprived of some of her rights if not vaccinated (Consultant, 2021). The causes of the above difficulties are diverse. We are interested in the contribution of the medical workers to the dissemination of reliable knowledge about the COVID-19 vaccines among the population. A profane view tells us that a doctor knows better. The patient's epistemological state is rather neglected due to the said patient's objectification through medical language (Foucault, 1963). Thus, doctors claim the right to judge; their responsibility should follow. We expect the most reliable knowledge to be provided by medical workers. We expect that they are able to tackle 'an infodemic due to rampant spread of misinformation and rumor about COVID-19 across various online media' (Subedi et al., 2020: 56). However, several quantitative studies show that this may not be the case. For example, Subedi et al. (2020) assumed that 'intern doctors as young medical trainees should have scientific knowledge of disease and not be mis
Life-World, World of Science, and Vaccine Hesitancy: A Phenomenological Approach
Human Studies, 2024
This article aimed to show the analytical potential of the life-world concept in the field of public health, which has not received much attention in the phenomenological literature. Specifically, based on phenomenologically grounded qualitative research, we aimed to show how the life-world concept, as worked out in Edmund Husserl's philosophy, can offer new insights on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Although there are many ways in which the life-world can motivate vaccine hesitancy, we have narrowed our focus to one of them. Our aim is to argue that COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is motivated by discrepancies and conflicts between the perceptual life-world and the scientific knowledge. If the scientific knowledge about the pandemic and the vaccine is not integrated in the life-world-which in its core is an embodied, perceptual world-and instead conflicts with it, people are more likely to become disinclined to get vaccinated rather than motivated to pursue vaccination. We conclude the discussion by outlining ideas on how the insights offered by our analysis could be potentially used in devising management and communication strategies in public health crises, such as a pandemic outbreak.