Vaccine Hesitancy: Meeting the Challenge

Course overview

The end of the COVID-19 pandemic will depend on our ability to address vaccine hesitancy, one of the top 10 threats to global health. Meeting the Challenge of Vaccination Hesitancy lays out actionable steps that leaders across healthcare, research, philanthropy, and technology can take to build confidence in vaccines and vaccinations. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide measles outbreaks in communities with low immunization rates revealed gaps in the herd immunity that once protected us, including the United States largest measles outbreak in 20 years in 2019. The troubling trend of declining vaccination uptake is fueled by complacency and loss of confidence in the system that develops, produces, recommends and delivers vaccines. Bold, interdisciplinary, global action is urgently needed to ensure confidence in immunization, which is estimated to save between 2 and 3 million lives every year. Three Big Ideas proposed in this report address the primary barriers to vaccine acceptance, provide a framework for progress, and sound a call to action. The Sabin-Aspen Vaccine Science and Policy Group brings together senior leaders across many disciplines to examine some of the most challenging vaccine-related issues and drive impactful change. Members are influential, creative, out-of-the-box thinkers who vigorously probe a single topic each year and develop actionable recommendations to advance innovative ideas for the development, distribution, and use of vaccines, as well as evidence- based and cost-effective approaches to immunization.