It’s urgent – we must do something about vaccine hesitancy – Cosmos

Dr Alessandro Siani

School of Biological Sciences at the University of Portsmouth in the UK.

As climate change causes more extreme weather events, increased rainfall and rising temperatures, itsincreasing the spreadof infectious diseases.

While this claim might sound like scaremongering, it is not a prediction its already happening now in our cities, as exemplified by news reportsof the streets of Paris being fumigatedto limit the spread of tiger mosquitoes known to carry Zika and dengue.

Vaccines are a key tool in the fight against these diseases. They can protect against some tropical and mosquito-borne illnesses, such as Japanese encephalitis, dengue or yellow fever, as well as many diseases that can thrive when drought and flooding reduce access to clean water, such as cholera and hepatitis A.

With newglobal pandemics also predicted to emergewith climate change, vaccines will likely play a key role in mitigating their most devastating impacts.

But troublingly, vaccine hesitancy appears to have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, and its not just COVID vaccines that are subject to this hesitancy, but vaccines more broadly even those that have been successfully used for decades and led to the near-eradication of some infectious diseases.

TheUK Health Security Agency warned that urgent action should be takento curb the re-emergence of measles outbreaks caused by the decline in MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine coverage in some communities.

The increase in vaccine scepticism presents a real challenge for healthcare organisations and national governments as they attempt to incorporate a climate resilience lens into their public health plans.

The decline in vaccine confidence was a key finding ofa study I carried out with my student Amy Trantercomparing survey data collected before and after the onset of the pandemic.

We ran two anonymous online surveys of more than 1000 adults in November 2019 and January 2022 respectively, with the aim of investigating public perspectives on the practice of vaccination and the factors that might underpin hesitancy and refusal.

Both surveys asked respondents to indicate their attitudes towards statements including vaccines are safe and I think vaccines should be a compulsory practice.

Because the second survey was carried out after COVID-19 emerged, it contained two additional questions specifically focused on that pandemic.

The results were troubling: They showed that confidence in vaccinations was considerably lower in 2022 compared to 2019 across all demographic groups.

Almost one quarter (23.8 percent) of participants in 2022 reported their confidence in vaccines had declined since the onset of the pandemic.

A decrease in vaccine confidence was found across participants ages, genders, religious beliefs, education levels and ethnicities.

We found that, among our participants, some demographic groups were more vaccine-hesitant than others. In both 2019 and 2022, participants who held religious beliefs were more vaccine-hesitant than agnostic or atheist individuals. Respondents of Black and Asian ethnic backgrounds were also less vaccine-confident than White respondents in both surveys (although for the Asian participants this difference was only statistically significant in the post-pandemic survey.)

There was also a key age-related difference between the 2019 and 2022 groups: while middle-aged (46 to 60-year-old) respondents were more vaccine-hesitant than any other age group in the 2019 cohort, this was no longer the case in 2022, when middle-age participants appeared more confident than those between 18 and 30 years old.

This finding gels withprevious findingsof a separate survey carried out during the Delta wave of COVID, which indicated that younger populations had less willingness to receive vaccinations.

The trend might also reflect the disproportionate severity of COVID in older patients, which may have prompted a higher perception of the infection risk in elderly participants, spurring a greater willingness to get vaccinated.

While the practice of vaccination has been met withcontroversy and oppositionever since its inception, the COVID vaccines were met with particularly heated scepticism and hostility.

The decline in vaccine confidence post-COVID has significant public health implications especially given that vaccine hesitancy was already a key threat to global health even before the pandemic hit.

Today,millions of children remainunvaccinated and therefore vulnerable to numerous vaccine-preventable diseases. We know that climate change disproportionatelyimpacts the most disadvantagedand marginalised groups: in addition to the direct effects of climate change (e.g. floods and droughts), it is the poorest populations in developing countries who will likely suffer the most if vaccine hesitancy drives down vaccination rates.

Thus, rebuilding vaccine confidence must be a priority for all governments and health agencies seeking to build climate-resilient health systems. Ideally, authorities should consider specifically tackling vaccine hesitancy in their plans for climate adaptation.

Health authorities seeking to address vaccine misinformation should be non-judgemental in their approach, and mindful ofcultural and religious factors that might underpin the hesitancy.

Vaccine communication works best when it is culturally appropriate and tailored to the individuals position on the vaccine hesitancy continuum: By engaging with specific groups based on their concerns, discussions can be focused and are more likely to be productive and less confrontational, as researchersfromThe University of Melbournehave found.

Emphasising support for vaccinations, rather than focusing on detractors and conspiracy theories, may also be a wise approach in attempts to overcome vaccine hesitancy,since research showsthat making vaccine uptake visible will encourage vaccine acceptance as a social norm.

Public health campaigns should also emphasise the many success stories linked to vaccination campaigns throughout history, for example the drastic reduction intyphus,cholera, plague, tuberculosis,diphtheriaandpertussisin the early 1900s, the elimination ofpolio,measles, mumps andrubellaacross several regions over the following decades, and the global eradication ofsmallpoxin the 1980s.

Ultimately, it is essential to acknowledge that climate change and vaccine hesitancy are not onlyexistential threats to our species,but also extremely polarising and controversial topics. Considering the enormous political and financial interests at stake think of thebillions spent by fossil fuel lobbiesto spread false narratives denying human impact on climate change dispelling misinformation on these topics is one of the most challenging collective endeavours of our times.

To succeed, it is crucial that governments and health authorities work together with scientists, educators and community leaders to coordinate a response that is global in scale but tailored to individual local communities.

Dr Alessandro Siani is the Associate Head (Students) of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. With a research background on cellular and molecular bases of human pathology and a keen focus on science communication, education and pedagogy, he authoredseveral peer-reviewed papersin both biomedical and educational journals.

Originally published underCreative Commonsby360info.

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It's urgent - we must do something about vaccine hesitancy - Cosmos