Abstract
Vaccines have been crucial in reducing mortality and morbidity around the world, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Furthermore, vaccinations have also resulted in a considerable amount of economic savings. However, there are a growing number of individuals who express a strong skepticism of vaccine safety and effectiveness. These “vaccine-hesitant” individuals choose to reject or delay vaccine administration. A number of strategies have been developed to address the various socioeconomic and cultural circumstances of each vaccine-hesitant individual. However, there is a need to clarify the various factors that promote vaccine acceptance, delay, and rejection. In this article, we discuss the factors that promote vaccine hesitancy from recent research, describe some of the interventions we know to be effective in reducing hesitancy, and develop an agenda for researchers and students interested in vaccine hesitancy research.
Health Science Inquiry encourages authors to publish the work under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0) that allows others to distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the work, even commercially, as long as they credit the Author(s) for the original creation. Authors may however choose to have their work distributed under any of the Creative Commons licenses currently available by specifying their preferred licence in the publication agreement. A description of the Creative Commons licences is available here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/