Parental Hesitancy for Routine Vaccines

Even though vaccines are known as one of the greatest accomplishments in public health history, they are being looked down upon for numerous reasons. Parental vaccine hesitancy has become more widespread and known. The social structure of our society causes herd mentality in many parents and people causing more sicknesses in children that could be easily preventable from vaccine. However, pediatricians have an obligation to respond to this behavior through education and no coercive behaviors. This has been an increasingly popular topic as it has become more prevalent in modern society.

Vaccines that are most typically overlooked by parents are influenza, HPV, polio, MMR, varicella, hep B and much more. There are a number of reasons that parents refuse these vaccines, including:

• Lack of need for vaccines: Since immunization has started, there has been decrease in the amount of VPD(vaccine prevented diseases) and parents are starting to look at the risk of the vaccien rather than the disease itself. Recent studies have shown that parents believed it was better for their children to get the disease naturally rather than immunized. They also believed that it was better to take inaction than action(vaccine). Because of parents’ lack of knowledge, they believe that their children are not susceptible to VPDs.
• Safety of vaccines: Safety has always been one of the main concerns of vaccines. Because unlike other types of medicine, vaccines are given to healthy to prevent sicknesses. This means that pediatricians need to provide information informind parents that vaccines are not 100 percent safe but the only side effects are very mild and low grade. Parents will often want to learn more specifically about a vaccine so healthcare providers must be knowledgeable about the vaccine and provide the guidelines that FDA has set for these vaccines. Pediatricians must provide information on the hypothetical adverse events that could potentially occur and inform the parents that they will continue to monitor the vaccine’s safety. However, when explaining this, healthcare providers must explain it in a way that parents will understand and not with an overwhelming amount of medical terminology. Parents will then have to decide that the risks are safe to take or not.
• Lack of trust in healthcare providers: Trust is very important when it comes to the parents relation with their healthcare provider. Parents usually report that they have a high level of trust in healthcare providers when it comes to advice about nutrition and behavioral development. However, this level of trust is not the same when talking about the safety and details of vaccines. Parents believe that healthcare providers tend to only provide the benefits of vaccines and not the risks, causing to be think that the information is one-sided. Furthermore, parents question the information about vaccine safety provided from the federal government. Because the government has the ability to record any adverse events or risks relating to vaccine safety, they are skeptical to whether everything the government has reported is honest.
• Perceived lack of involvement in decision-making process: Many parents have concerns about vaccination schedule as most vaccines are given to the child at a very young age before their immune system has fully developed. Following a strict schedule given by healthcare providers tends to make some parents feel like they don’t get to make decisions for what they think is best for their child. They likely try to suggest an alternative schedule to make them feel like their child’s vaccines are more individualized rather than standard schedules which helps alleviate fears that parents may hold. However, there are studies showing that alternative schedules are more risky as they may lead to more harm than good. It increases the risk of children contracting infections and the delaying of vaccines keeps the child susceptible to infections for longer. These parents are not very insistent on this though, some will still consider the vaccines at regular wellness checkups but this requires healthcare providers to provide more details relating to risks and benefits.
• Vaccines and autism: There are concerns that autism can result from vaccines. This arose from vaccines that carried thimerosal which was believed to affect brain development in children. Thimerosal was used to prevent dangerous bacteria, but it was only used in very small doses. Because these vaccines were given during the time period of when children first have brain development, parents believed that they were not safe. In 1998, this concern increased as a study was published explaining how there was a direct link between autism and the MMR vaccine. However, later scientists found out that this information was falsified and didn’t have proper medical protocols listed. This still concerned especially parents that already had one autistic child. They were more likely to stray away from vaccines for their other children as well. A more recent study confirmed that there is no medical evidence of MMR vaccine leading to autistism.

These are only some of many reasons why parents refuse to get their children vaccinated. Pediatrics must consider the reasons that parents do this and provide accurate amounts of information about vaccines to parents. In doing this, they can build trust with parents which may help parents to be less likely to refuse vaccines in followup appointments.