Shifting attitudes of vaccine-hesitant parents

Immunisation has been proven to be one of the most successful public health measures of the last century, with paediatric vaccines having dramatically reduced infectious disease and childhood mortality worldwide. However, parents resistant to vaccination remain uninfluenced by the extensive evidence of their benefit at both individual and population health level.

Dr Jon Wardle has been awarded an NHMRC Translating Research Into Practice (TRIP) Fellowship for his research into the translational gap between evidence and practice around childhood vaccination rates in Australia.

Dr Wardle’s work addresses the complex societal factors that influence vaccine hesitancy. The fellowship focuses on the most effective ways of communicating vaccination information to vaccine-hesitant parents considering the wider concerns identified by vaccine-hesitant parents themselves in previous studies.

The proposed intervention seeks to change the behaviour of both clinicians and parents of children requiring vaccinations. It will include a clinician decision-making tool which helps primary care providers uncover underlying reasons for vaccine hesitancy with specific individualised information resources that target major concerns raised by the vaccine-hesitant community.