Information Curation among Vaccine Cautious Parents: Web 2.0, Pinterest Thinking, and Pediatric Vaccination Choice

ABSTRACT

To learn about pediatric vaccine decision-making, we surveyed and interviewed US parents with at least one child kindergarten age or younger (N = 53). Through an anthropologically informed content analysis, we found that fully vaccinating parents (n = 33) mostly saw vaccination as routine. In contrast, selective and nonvaccinating parents (n = 20) exhibited the type of self-informed engagement that the health care system recommends. Selective vaccinators also expressed multiple, sometimes contradictory positions on vaccination that were keyed to individual children’s biologies, child size, environmental hazards, specific diseases, and discrete vaccines. Rather than logical progressions, viewpoints were presented as assembled collections, reflecting contemporary information filtering and curation practices and the prevalence of collectively experienced and constructed digital “hive” narratives. Findings confirm the need for a noncategorical approach to intervention that accommodates the fluid, polyvalent nature of vaccine reasoning and the curatorial view selectively vaccinating parents take toward information while honoring their efforts at engaged healthcare consumption.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizen science
• immunization
• parenting
• patient activation
• social media

Acknowledgments

Haley Chasteene, Berhana Eyob, Thomas Friday, Soujanya Gade, Allison Hillis, Leann Jensen, Scott Johnson, Kelsey Jorgensen, Lindsay Klein, Susan Madruga, Mali Mccormack, Nancy Mendez, Raquel Perez, Amanda Piccus, Natasha Reeder, Matthew Schneider, Lauren Sit, Anna Steiner, James Turner, Ana Vargas, Jill Varney, Kyrstin West, Bobbie Yarbrough—all students in San Diego State University’s spring 2014 medical anthropology course, led by Professor Sobo—contributed to data collection with ethics board approval. Jane-Ann Carroll of SDSU’s Children’s Center and managers of various organizations frequented by vaccine-cautious parents enabled recruitment. Various portions of the working manuscript were presented in 2015 at the annual meetings of the Society for Applied Anthropology and of the American Ethnological Society.

Funding

This institutionally approved research (IRB#950089) was supported in part by a grant awarded to the first author by the San Diego State University’s President’s Leadership Fund.

Notes

¹. State legislation ending PBEs (SB277) becomes effective July 2016.

². This includes shifts to a public health perspective prompted by interviewer probes regarding herd immunity.

³. TRAILS does not offer benchmark data for the twelfth grade “Evaluate Sources and Information” component only.

Additional information

Funding

This institutionally approved research (IRB#950089) was supported in part by a grant awarded to the first author by the San Diego State University’s President’s Leadership Fund.

Notes on contributors

Elisa J. Sobo

Elisa J. Sobo is professor of Anthropology at San Diego State University and president of the Society for Medical Anthropology. Her current research concerns pediatric cannabis treatment for epilepsy. Her latest publications focus on the intersection of education and health.

Arianna Huhn

Arianna Huhn is assistant professor of Anthropology and director of the Anthropology Museum at California State University San Bernardino. Her research focuses on wellbeing and ethnophysiology.

Autumn Sannwald

Autumn Sannwald joined the research team as a San Diego State University anthropology undergraduate. Her research interests include modern food systems and human health, alternative medicines, and high-risk youth, with whom she currently works via the San Diego Public Library system.

Lori Thurman

Lori Thurman is a graduate student in anthropology at San Diego State University. Her interests include medical anthropology, vaccine refusal and parenting culture in the United States and Western Europe, and the culture of public health.