Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics
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Hum Vaccin Immunother · Dec 2013
CommentRethinking vaccine policy making in an era of vaccine hesitancy: time to rebuild, not remodel?
Recently in this journal, David Ropeik argued for imposing additional burdens upon individuals who refused vaccines for themselves or for their children. Specifically, Ropeik advocated for policies that would decrease the ease of claiming vaccine exemptions and restricting unvaccinated children participation in social activities. We argue that, in order to derive the optimal societal benefit from modern vaccinology in an era of vaccine hesitancy, we need to consider doing more than conventional remodeling of current policies. We may need to fundamentally redesign and rebuild.
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Despite strong national recommendations to vaccinate adolescents against the human papillomavirus (HPV), only 14% of teenage girls completed all 3 doses in 2010. Parental hesitancy may be one of the strongest reasons behind this low uptake rate. This review investigates sources of parental hesitancy including parental concerns associated with vaccinations in general, parental knowledge as a basis of HPV vaccine hesitancy, social qualms parents may have with regards to the HPV vaccine, and parental attitudes toward allowing their sons to be vaccinated against HPV. By better understanding these sources of hesitancy, we can focus research efforts towards addressing them in an attempt to improve HPV vaccine uptake.