Stuck How Vaccine Rumors Start--and Why They Don't Go Away

Vaccine reluctance and refusal are no longer limited to the margins of society. Debates around vaccines' necessity -- along with questions around their side effects -- have gone mainstream, blending with geopolitical conflicts, political campaigns, celebrity causes, and "natural" lifestyles to win a growing number of hearts and minds. Today's anti-vaccine positions find audiences where they've never existed previously. Stuck examines how the issues surrounding vaccine hesitancy are, more than anything, about people feeling left out of the conversation. A new dialogue is long overdue, one that addresses the many types of vaccine hesitancy and the social factors that perpetuate them. To do this, Stuck provides a clear-eyed examination of the social vectors that transmit vaccine rumors, their manifestations around the globe, and how these individual threads are all connected.

HEIDI J. LARSON, PhD, is Professor of Anthropology, Risk, and Decision Science and Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; she holds a concurrent position as Clinical Professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington. She was previously an Associate Professor in International Development at Clark University and a Research Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health's Center for Population and Development Studies. Dr. Larson was named one of The BCC's Top 100 Women of 2021 for her work on vaccine confidence.