{"id":1645,"date":"2025-06-10T18:33:46","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T18:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/06\/10\/umich-community-discuss-public-health-and-vaccine-hesitancy\/"},"modified":"2025-06-10T18:33:49","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T18:33:49","slug":"umich-community-discuss-public-health-and-vaccine-hesitancy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/06\/10\/umich-community-discuss-public-health-and-vaccine-hesitancy\/","title":{"rendered":"UMich community discuss public health and vaccine hesitancy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Since assuming his position in January, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., United States secretary of health and human services, has delivered <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/health-news\/articles\/calling-the-shots-tracking-robert-f-kennedy-jr-s-moves-on-vaccines\">mixed commentary<\/a> on vaccines to the public. When asked if he would vaccinate his own children against measles during a May 14 hearing with the House Committee on Appropriations, he<a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/7285480\/rfk-vaccines-measles-advice\/\"> advised Americans against taking his medical advice<\/a>. Kennedy also recently <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SecKennedy\/status\/1927368440811008138\">removed<\/a> the COVID-19 vaccine from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/index.html\">Centers for Disease Control\u2019s<\/a> recommended immunization schedule for healthy children and pregnant women.<\/p>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigan.gov\/mdhhs\/adult-child-serv\/childrenfamilies\/immunizations\/measlesupdates\">Michigan Department of Health and Human Services<\/a>, as of June 6 there have been 10 confirmed cases of measles, including four outbreak cases, in the state of Michigan since the start of 2025. These cases mark the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigan.gov\/mdhhs\/inside-mdhhs\/newsroom\/2025\/04\/17\/measles-outbreak#:~:text=This%20is%20the%20first%20confirmed,Natasha%20Bagdasarian%2C%20chief%20medical%20executive.\">first confirmed measles outbreaks<\/a> in the state since 2019. A<a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigan.gov\/mdhhs\/inside-mdhhs\/newsroom\/2024\/08\/29\/ivaccinate#:~:text=A%20measles%20outbreak%20in%20the,can%20take%20hold%20and%20spread.\"> 2024 MDHHS study<\/a> revealed only 70.2% of children between 19 and 36 months of age in Michigan had completed all doses of the recommended vaccine series \u2014 significantly lower than the <a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC9197781\/#:~:text=Measles%20elimination%20hinges%20on%20vaccination,are%20a%20cause%20for%20concern.\">95% threshold<\/a> necessary to maintain herd immunity \u2014 creating low-vaccination pockets which are susceptible to outbreaks of infectious diseases like measles.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Emily Stoneman, clinical associate professor of internal medicine, said messaging from public health officials is important to grow trust and influence public perception to combat vaccine hesitancy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s really important for our health officials to provide clear, consistent messaging that vaccines are safe and effective and they save lives,\u201d Stoneman said. \u201cUnfortunately, we have not been getting that from our current leadership. Vaccines are really the only effective way to prevent and stop these outbreaks that we\u2019re seeing.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>In an interview with The Daily, professor of epidemiology Matthew Boulton, senior associate dean for global public health, said the 20th century saw the development of numerous vaccines and immunization policies which have resulted in most preventable diseases<a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC3495718\/\"> dropping by more than 90% in the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c(Vaccines have) had a profound impact on health generally, especially amongst infants and young children because, at the turn of the 20th century, there was a very high probability for children contracting and then dying from vaccine preventable diseases, and we\u2019ve been able to largely overcome that with universal vaccination programs,\u201d Boulton said. \u201cUnfortunately, what we\u2019re seeing now in contemporary situations is higher levels of vaccine hesitancy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Boulton said a reason people tend to discount how serious diseases like measles are is because they have never experienced them before.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cParadoxically, one of the challenges is that public health has been so successful with controlling vaccine-preventable diseases that a lot of people have never encountered them before,\u201d Boulton said. \u201cAnd so there\u2019s a natural tendency to discount how serious they are because they\u2019ve never seen them before. I mean, most people have never seen a measles case before, but that\u2019s because public health was so successful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In June 2024, the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mclarenhealthplan.org\/mclaren-health-plan\/news\/michigans-childhood-vaccination-rates-drop-5267\"> MDHHS announced<\/a> Michigan\u2019s childhood vaccine rates were at a historic low, with the number of middle and elementary schools with vaccination rates below 70% increasing by 85 schools total from 2015 to 2023. Boulton said he believes both the COVID-19 pandemic and politics have influenced <a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC11860934\/\">rising rates<\/a> of vaccine hesitancy in the United States over the past few years.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cThe vaccine hesitancy is not new \u2014 we certainly had seen vaccine hesitancy prior to the pandemic,\u201d Boulton said. \u201cI think what changed is it became heavily politicized during that time by the administration, and I think that drove higher levels of vaccine hesitancy. And I do feel there\u2019s been a spillover effect from that now affecting other vaccines.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with The Daily, LSA rising senior Anika Deshpande, internal vice president of<a href=\"https:\/\/www.curis-umich.com\/\"> CURIS \u2013 Public Health Advocacy<\/a>, said she thinks the lack of efforts to effectively address vaccine concerns has exacerbated the issue, using COVID-19 as an example.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think a lot of the problems that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic were not supplemented with education for providers, in terms of how to go about those conversations,\u201d Deshpande said. \u201cAnd so I\u2019ve witnessed a, \u2018Okay, it looks like this is something that is really sensitive for you, we\u2019re just not going to talk about it.\u2019 Whereas, I think in order to actually incite change, those conversations need to be had between physicians, nurses, whatever healthcare provider and their patients instead of completely avoiding the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Deshpande said she believes conversations regarding vaccines need to occur with understanding, not winning, in mind.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think framing the conversation as saying \u2018How can we bridge the gap between worldviews using things like clear communication and accessible language?\u2019 instead of saying \u2018How are we convincing the other side of our argument?\u2019 can really help shift how we approach conversations like that,\u201d Deshpande said.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Stoneman said it is important to handle vaccine concerns on an individual level with patients, rather than attempt to provide broad reassurance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen people resist vaccination, I think we tend to lump them all together right into one category,\u201d Stoneman said. \u201cBut if you look at it, people have a lot of different reasons for why they may choose not to get vaccinated or may choose not to have their children get vaccinated. So I think really having the public health messaging, but also having individual conversations with our patients about \u2018This is why vaccines are important.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Daily Staff Reporter Aanya Panyadahundi can be contacted at aanyatp@umich.edu.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since assuming his position in January, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., United States secretary of health and human services, has delivered mixed commentary on vaccines to the public. When asked if he would vaccinate his own children against measles during a May 14 hearing with the House Committee on Appropriations, he advised Americans against taking his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[441,283,192,1853,1419,341,1852],"class_list":{"0":"post-1645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-community","9":"tag-discuss","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-hesitancy","12":"tag-public","13":"tag-umich","14":"tag-vaccine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1647,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1645\/revisions\/1647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}