scholarly journals Addressing vaccine hesitancy: the LEARN approach

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunjan Taneja
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
The Other ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Immunization Programs ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Human Behaviors ◽  
What Works ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Learn Approach

Immunization programs today stand at crossroads. Even as COVID vaccine campaigns continue, inequity, concerns and confusion around them seems ever expanding. While vaccine hesitancy in some form or the other has existed since the inception of vaccination, the complex and dynamic world that we live in now has resulted in hesitancy to vaccines become an outcome of myriad interactions that we encounter in our day to day lives. Factors extraneous to health systems are major determinants and it is essentially the culmination of economics, politics, science, and technology impacting human behaviors and emotions which result in a parent, family or a community arrive at the decision of whether to or not to vaccinate. Vaccine hesitancy is on the rise, it is becoming more organized and now is not just a problem of high- income countries. It is imperative that as public health advocates, academicians, policy makers, managers and implementers we recognize it and adopt a non-judgmental and non-partisan approach built on empathy, respect and trust and not just scientific knowledge and theorems to address it. The current paper puts forward a novel approach to address hesitancy, the LEARN approach: and advocates that we need to ‘Listen’ to the voices of concern, ‘Engage’ with all stakeholders, ‘Articulate’ and communicate better in a language which is simple and comprehensible, ‘Reflect’ on what works and what does not and at the same time ‘Negate’ events and episodes which dent confidence in science and promote complacency.

Health inequalities: still making policy in a fog?

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTIN POWELL
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Life Expectancy ◽  
Health Inequalities ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Policy Perspective ◽  
What Works ◽  
Health Action ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Unrealistic Expectations

What Works in Tackling Health Inequalities? Pathways, Policies and Practice through the Lifecourse S. Asthana and J. Halliday Bristol: Policy, Press, 2006Health Action Zones: Partnerships for Health Equity M. Barnes, L. Bauld, M. Benzeval, K. Judge, M. Mackenzie, H. Sullivan Abingdon: Routledge, 2005Health Inequality: An Introduction to Theories, Concepts and Methods M. Bartley Cambridge: Polity, 2004Status Syndrome: How your Social Standing Directly Affects your Health and Life Expectancy M. Marmot London: Bloomsbury, 2004These four texts on health inequalities are all very different books written by leading commentators with different academic backgrounds. This review will concentrate on the policy perspective that may be of most interest to many readers of this journal. It is also arguably the Achilles heel of the health inequalities literature. According to policy makers, much current research on health inequalities was of little use to policy making, and public health researchers have been criticized for political naivety, for lacking understanding of how policy is made, and for having unrealistic expectations (Petticrew et al., 2004: 815–816). Similarly, Klein (2003) points to the problems of ‘making policy in a fog’. The first two texts under review focus on policy and are written by policy analysts.

scholarly journals A novel approach for measurement and decomposition of the economywide costs of shutting down tourism and related service sectors against COVID-19

2021 ◽  
pp. 135481662110371
Author(s):  
Serdar Sayan ◽  
Ayla Alkan
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Sectoral Output ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Related Service ◽  
Service Sectors ◽  
Tourism Activity ◽  
Output Losses ◽  
The Right

The trade-off between desirable public health outcomes and undesirable economic outcomes of anti-pandemic measures forces policy makers everywhere to seek the right combination of measures to balance the public health concerns against employment and income considerations. This article describes a novel input–output approach to assessing economywide costs of shutting down tourism and related sectors to curb the spread of COVID-19. Our framework allows for a decomposition of the total effects of shutdowns into sectoral output losses resulting from (i) suspension of the delivery of inputs to other sectors, (ii) termination of the demand for inputs produced by these sectors, and (iii) the interruption of payments to the owners of factors of production employed in the sectors ordered to shut down. We illustrate the use of this methodological framework to measure and decompose the effects of recent shutdown orders issued in Turkey, a country of major tourism activity.

Unleashing Our Potential— Pharmacists' Role in Vaccination and Public Health

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (9) ◽  
pp. 372-378
Author(s):  
Arjun Poudel ◽  
Esther T. L. Lau ◽  
Chris Campbell ◽  
Lisa M. Nissen
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Side Effects ◽  
Chronic Conditions ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Noncommunicable Diseases ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Immunization Programs ◽  
Vaccine Preventable Diseases

One of the greatest innovations in health care has been the development of vaccines and immunization programs that have significantly minimized the morbidity and mortality resulting from vaccine preventable diseases. While vaccines were traditionally used against infectious diseases, recent advances in technology have led to the development of vaccines for noncommunicable diseases and chronic conditions. Vaccinations are considered the most cost-effective intervention in public health that has the potential to save millions of lives every year. Despite the availability and effectiveness of vaccines for many diseases, immunization programs, and service uptake remain underused in many countries. This is mainly because of the lack of easy access to vaccinations, risk-benefit perceptions, false beliefs, and concerns about the side effects. Vaccine hesitancy—the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate, is listed as one of the top 10 threats to global health.

Seniors' narratives of asking (and not asking) for help after a fall: implications for identity

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
PATRICIA A. MILLER ◽  
CHRISTINA SINDING ◽  
LAUREN E. GRIFFITH ◽  
HARRY S. SHANNON ◽  
PARMINDER RAINA
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Emergency Department ◽  
Social Care ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Community Dwelling ◽  
The Other ◽  
Health Concern ◽  
Public Health Concern ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Health And Social Care

ABSTRACTFalls among community-dwelling seniors constitute a major public health concern because of the potential morbidity and mortality associated with the fall. This study examined the informal care networks accessed by Canadian seniors who had visited the Emergency Department as a result of a fall, and considered the implications of the processes of asking for and receiving help on the senior's identity. Four themes were identified. The first was valuing independence. The remaining three themes concerned threats to the participants' identities linked to the need to ask for or receive help from family and friends. They were: becoming indebted, feeling devalued and becoming a burden to others. Seniors were noted to excuse family members from the expectation of helping because of work and family commitments, and illness. Participants described a mutually beneficial relationship with friends wherein both parties valued their independence and provided assistance to the other when needed. Their comments suggested that assistance was viewed as a good to be traded among peers. Our findings indicate that seniors value their independence and may not seek help even when it appears to be available, if asking threatens valued identities. Health and social care practitioners and policy makers responsible for planning and delivery of services should take this into account in order to ensure the best possible care for injured community-dwelling seniors.

Applying strengths-based approaches to nutrition research and interventions in Australian Indigenous communities

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Wendy Foley ◽  
Lisa Schubert
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Torres Strait Islander ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Social Resources ◽  
The Other ◽  
Public Health Nutrition ◽  
Australian Aboriginal ◽  
What Works ◽  
Nutrition Research ◽  
Torres Strait

This paper provides a background to strengths-based approaches used in health and considers what these have to offer in the context of public health nutrition, with particular reference to work with Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Deficit, disease and dysfunction permeate approaches in health fields, including nutrition. Public health has focused on gathering evidence about ‘what works’ from this deficit perspective, particularly in those communities identified as vulnerable. Strengths-based approaches, on the other hand, work with the assets already existing in individuals, communities and institutions to support the conditions for health. Although strengths-based approaches are used in some health fields, they are under-utilised in public health nutrition. A strengths-based paradigm draws on the theory of salutogenesis to accentuate positive capacities so that nutrition professionals and clients/communities can jointly identify problems and activate solutions. Research processes and findings from a number of participatory Indigenous nutrition health projects will be discussed. This research has identified significant social resources within Australian Indigenous communities and these assets offer points from which to work. A strengths-based paradigm offers a different language with which to address nutrition inequalities. It can contribute to empowering Indigenous individuals and communities towards healthier nutrition. We propose that redressing the current imbalance between strengths and deficit-based approaches is needed in public health nutrition and consider the nature and potentials of strengths-based approaches in nutrition, with particular reference to their use in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups.

scholarly journals Cooperation in the Time of Coronavirus: When Wearing Face Masks Signals More Than Just Willingness to Cooperate and Comply

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nattavudh Powdthavee ◽  
Yohanes Eko Riyanto ◽  
Erwin C. L. Wong ◽  
Jonathan Yeo Xiong-Wei ◽  
Chan Qi-Yu
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Experimental Design ◽  
Social Perception ◽  
Revealed Preference ◽  
The Other ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Prisoners Dilemma ◽  
Public Health Officials ◽  
Willingness To Cooperate

With the COVID-19 pandemic still raging and the vaccination program still rolling out, there continues to be an immediate need for public health officials to better understand the mechanisms behind the deep and perpetual divide over face masks in America. Using a random sample of Americans (N=615), following a pre-registered experimental design and analytic plan, we first demonstrated that mask wearers were not innately more cooperative as individuals than non-mask wearers in the Prisoners’ Dilemma (PD) game when information about their own and the other person’s mask usage was not salient. However, we found strong, revealed preference evidence of in-group favoritism among both mask and non-mask wearers when information about the other partner’s mask usage was known. Holding other things constant, non-mask wearers were 23 percentage points less likely to cooperate than mask wearers when facing a mask-wearing partner, and 26 percentage points more likely to cooperate than mask wearers when facing a non-mask wearing partner. Our analysis suggests social identity effects to be one of the main drivers of people’s decision whether to wear or shun face masks during the pandemic. Policy makers should therefore take social perception of face masks into account when designing not only what public messages to deliver, but also who to deliver these messages.

Unleashing Our Potential— Pharmacists' Role in Vaccination and Public Health

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (9) ◽  
pp. 372-378
Author(s):  
Arjun Poudel ◽  
Esther T. L. Lau ◽  
Chris Campbell ◽  
Lisa M. Nissen
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Side Effects ◽  
Chronic Conditions ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Noncommunicable Diseases ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Immunization Programs ◽  
Vaccine Preventable Diseases

One of the greatest innovations in health care has been the development of vaccines and immunization programs that have significantly minimized the morbidity and mortality resulting from vaccine preventable diseases. While vaccines were traditionally used against infectious diseases, recent advances in technology have led to the development of vaccines for noncommunicable diseases and chronic conditions. Vaccinations are considered the most cost-effective intervention in public health that has the potential to save millions of lives every year. Despite the availability and effectiveness of vaccines for many diseases, immunization programs, and service uptake remain underused in many countries. This is mainly because of the lack of easy access to vaccinations, risk-benefit perceptions, false beliefs, and concerns about the side effects. Vaccine hesitancy—the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate, is listed as one of the top 10 threats to global health.

scholarly journals Comment on “The COVID-19 infodemic does not affect vaccine acceptance”

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riccardo Gallotti ◽  
Federico Pilati ◽  
Pier Luigi Sacco ◽  
Manlio De Domenico
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
Vaccine Acceptance ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Social Media Data ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Media Data

In a recent paper by Valensise et al [1], the authors present an analysis of social media data – from Facebook and Twitter – and vaccine hesitancy data – from Facebook – to provide evidence that the overabundance of potentially unreliable information, known as infodemic, does not affect vaccine acceptance. If confirmed, this result could have a dramatic impact on public health policies across the world, suggesting that current actions taken in place to contain and prevent the spreading of disinformation and misinformation might be useless to significantly hinder vaccine hesitancy. We disagree with this conclusion on the basis of existing literature that the authors fail to consider,of methodological concerns that suggest that their approach might have crucial flaws, and of an alternative empirical analysis unraveling a broader and richer picture to interpret.Simplistic analyses are not enough to assess the complex interplay between two complex social and behavioral phenomena such as vaccine hesitancy and infodemic: more sophisticated analyses are needed to account for the different intervening socio-cultural, behavioral, environmental and epidemiological factors. Under these conditions, we conclude that the authors’ main claim is conceptually and empirically unsupported. We are sincerely concerned that, if measures disregarding the circulating disinformation around the COVID19 vaccines were endorsed by policy makers in the design of future public health policies, it might lead to serious negative consequences by dangerously overlooking a major potential driver of dysfunctional behavioral responses to public health policies and goals.

scholarly journals The Impact of Public Health Events on COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy on Chinese Social Media: National Infoveillance Study (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zizheng Zhang ◽  
Guanrui Feng ◽  
Jiahong Xu ◽  
Yimin Zhang ◽  
Jinhui Li ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Health Concern ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Health Events ◽  
Model Training ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Over Time

BACKGROUND The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges to every country worldwide. A call for global vaccination for COVID-19 plays a pivotal role in the fight against this virus. With the development of COVID-19 vaccines, public willingness to get vaccinated has become an important public health concern, considering the vaccine hesitancy observed worldwide. Social media is powerful in monitoring public attitudes and assess the dissemination, which would provide valuable information for policy makers. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to investigate the responses of vaccine positivity on social media when major public events (major outbreaks) or major adverse events related to vaccination (COVID-19 or other similar vaccines) were reported. METHODS A total of 340,783 vaccine-related posts were captured with the poster’s information on Weibo, the largest social platform in China. After data cleaning, 156,223 posts were included in the subsequent analysis. Using pandas and SnowNLP Python libraries, posts were classified into 2 categories, positive and negative. After model training and sentiment analysis, the proportion of positive posts was computed to measure the public positivity toward the COVID-19 vaccine. RESULTS The positivity toward COVID-19 vaccines in China tends to fluctuate over time in the range of 45.7% to 77.0% and is intuitively correlated with public health events. In terms of gender, males were more positive (70.0% of the time) than females. In terms of region, when regional epidemics arose, not only the region with the epidemic and surrounding regions but also the whole country showed more positive attitudes to varying degrees. When the epidemic subsided temporarily, positivity decreased with varying degrees in each region. CONCLUSIONS In China, public positivity toward COVID-19 vaccines fluctuates over time and a regional epidemic or news on social media may cause significant variations in willingness to accept a vaccine. Furthermore, public attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination vary from gender and region. It is crucial for policy makers to adjust their policies through the use of positive incentives with prompt responses to pandemic-related news to promote vaccination acceptance.

scholarly journals The Place of Big Data in Addressing Emerged Issues in Vaccinology of the 21st Century

JAHR ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-355
Author(s):  
Gordana Pelčić ◽  
Ana Valković ◽  
Silvana Pavlinović ◽  
Suzana Vuletić ◽  
Ivana Tucak ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Big Data ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
The Other ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Great Achievement ◽  
Enormous Amount ◽  
The One

Vaccinology, as a great achievement of public health of the 20th century nowadays faces doubts, questions, and concerns that could be included in the term of vaccine hesitancy. The vaccinology in the 21st century is marked by the emerging anti-vaccine movements followed by a variety of attempts and approaches of professionals to resolve them. The globalization in health care on the one side and great technological achievements, on the other, create the possibilities where an enormous amount of data is publicly available. The professionals have based the benefits of vaccination on scientific data. Vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccine movements declare that they have also based their policy on scientific data. On the first line of facing parental vaccine hesitancy are primary care pediatricians. They can testify their own limiting abilities to do so, as well as the limiting abilities of other professionals involved in vaccinology. In the situation of an enormous amount of data, they could be drowned out and interpreted in various ways. It is clear that the old-fashioned “defense” of the great public achievement of the 20 century - vaccinology - is no longer appropriate. On the other hand, a search of the literature shows the entry of “Big Data” into medicine in general and the public health and vaccinology. This paper attempts to position the role of Big Data (its benefits, traps, and ethical implications) in vaccinology in the 21st century based on the literature research and our propositions.

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