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International research project conducted in Slovenia, Serbia, Finland, Spain, The Netherlands, Unided Kingdom, Germany, Hong Kong, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy and Croatia.
About the project
The decision on childhood vaccination is one of the most important concerns a parent encounters. Unlike a few decades ago, parents today are “socially forced” to have an opinion and to make the decision about this immensely important health-related issue. At the same time, parents are not forced to make an informed decision, nor are they protected from intensive and explicit societal influences of both normative-medical and lay-experience form. Anti-vaccination movements are on the rise, and the bursts of vaccine-preventable diseases have been linked to their activities.
We are an international research team that is currently running a study on parental decision making about childhood vaccination. Our focal point is not to decide whether (not) vaccinating is good or bad, but rather knowing how the parents feel about vaccination, what vaccine hesitancy is and how it is conveyed via cognitive mechanisms. We are striving to better understand how parents in different countries view vaccination and hopefully create more opportunities for parents’ concerns to be heard when designing healthcare interventions by drafting interventions custom-made for parents, establishing better communication channels and better, more effective formation of relevant, informative and non-patronizing messages, addressing their personal dilemmas and fears with respect and understanding.