SRA-E Lisbon 2017

Recent outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases (e.g. measles) as well practical obstacles to eradication (e.g. polio) have underscored the need to improve immunization rates internationally while paying more attention to the factors that drive vaccine acceptance, hesitancy an opposition of patients, healthcare professionals and policy makers. Vaccination decisions are influenced by both the availability of adequate and appropriate information and risk perceptions (including potential harms from the disease and from the vaccine). In the last decade of the 20st, breakthroughs in Risk communication research played a pivotal role in understanding how people view the competing risks of harm from the disease (to themselves and society) and potential harm from the vaccine. Have these lessons been taken on board by healthcare professionals and policy makers? Is it time to review how conditions may have changed and how vaccine risk communication should be (re)-conceptualised to inform policy and deliver more effective immunization ? This paper will offer a systematic review of the state of knowledge and suggest promising avenues for the future drawing on concrete examples of recent successes and failures.