How to talk with vaccine-hesitant people: a thread for epidemiologists & humans in general, on what the research suggests, and what has worked for me in the past.
1. Start by acknowledging the person's individual fears & concerns about vaccines. Ultimately, many of these are things we share--otherwise we wouldn't do clinical trials to assess safety and effectiveness.
2. Acknowledge a common goal too. If the reason they don't want a vaccine is that they're worried about their health outcomes or their child's health outcomes--ding ding ding, that's common ground. You also want good health outcomes for them! pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32281992/
3. If they are a member of an underserved community, I think it's only fair to acknowledge that they may have a *right* to distrust public health authorities and white male physicians. But that leads me to ...
4. Be a real person when talking to them. Start from the common ground of both of y'all being humans. (Don't be a science robot feeding information into an empty vessel--that's not how people work.) I talk about my own life and my own choices a lot ("here's what I would do").
(4a. Being a real person can also help establish common ground. If you both have kids, great! If you both love the same musical artist, great! If you both are sick of being cooped up, GREAT! Commiseration is a balm. You can both feel fulfilled by this convo.)
(4b. Humour can help, if the timing is right. I like to tell people that if I truly were a secret shill for Big Pharma that there's no way I'd be driving a 11-year-old Corolla with a broken A/C. Make sure you are laughing TOGETHER at the same thing, not at your or their expense!)
5. Address *individual* concerns. People have lots of reasons why they are hesitant: personal freedoms, not knowing what all is in the vaccine, the schedule, what kind of safety monitoring is there, etc. Respond directly. Actually answer their questions. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
5a. Be honest! If you don't know, say, "oh, that's a very good question. I don't know off the top of my head, but let me look into it and get back to you." Do👏not👏pretend👏to👏know👏if👏you👏don't👏! Validate their questions as being similar to ones you ask in your research.
6. Make sure you're communicating with people who have a real interest. In my house we have a saying: "My mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts." If you're talking to a person with this mindset, you may not be able to change their mind. That's OK. Be kind & let it go.
6a. If you can, try not to "well, actually" them. It's very important to get correct info out there, but don't just tell them flatly "that's wrong and you're wrong", if they truly want to know & learn. Because... 👇theatlantic.com/health/archive…
7. Take breaks!! Good communication with folks you don't see eye-to-eye with can be tiring, because it requires a TON of empathy. Take breaks and always, always, always be kind. (To others AND to yourself.)
I'm going to try to tweet about vaccine safety in the next few days, so here's hoping I can put my own advice into action🤞 Also, follow @rabednarczyk and @SaadOmer3 and @abuttenheim and @Muhellingson, whose work informs a lot of this.
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