June 21, 2017 – Opportunistic Vaccination

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:03 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Anchor lead: Why don’t people take vaccines when they’re recommended? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Let’s say you’re going on an Amazon river cruise, or a safari in Africa, and when you go to get your necessary vaccinations you are told you also are eligible for measles vaccine. Would you take it? A recent study in Annals of Internal Medicine showed that a large number of adults elected not to receive the measles vaccine. Patricia Davidson, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, says those who work in the health care field must lead the way.

Davidson: As health professionals we do not want to be the vectors of conditions. We have a real responsibility to be up to date. But this whole debate about vaccination really is a juxtaposition of individual rights versus broader social responsibility. Broader social responsibility makes for a just, civil, prosperous and safe society. How do we present these arguments in a way that are cogent, data-driven, and accessible to a wide range of people?  :33

There is currently a large measles outbreak here in the US. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.