Understanding vaccination resistance: moving beyond risk

Abstract

Mass childhood immunisation (MCI) is of primary importance to all modern public health systems and relies on high levels of uptake. Recent controversy in the UK about the safety of the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine has prompted widespread concerns and a government response that concentrates on providing more information to the public. This information has mainly adopted the language of risk, as exemplified in recent health promotion materials designed to persuade parents to choose the MMR vaccine. The paper analyses the key material and reveals three contestable assumptions; first, that individuals make decisions through a comparison of individual risk; second, that public concern about vaccination is due to a miscalculation of risk; third, that a policy of providing more risk statistics is the best response to the controversy. Through criticising these assumptions it is argued that some resistance to MCI is about alternative understandings of basic categories of health and disease. Further research is needed to investigate the role of uncertainty and trust in understanding anti-vaccination.

Keywords:

• risk
• vaccination
• immunisation
• resistance
• trust
• policy

Acknowledgements

Research into the anti-vaccination movement in the UK is being carried out with support from the Leverhulme Trust. Thanks are due to Robert Dingwall, Ian Forbes and Paul Martin for helpful comments on drafts of this paper.