School director Josh Greenberg has won a grant from the Canadian Immunization Research Network (CIRN) to examine media narratives of infectious disease outbreaks and the social construction of vaccine hesitancy as a ‘wicked problem’.
The study focuses on media coverage of the 2014/15 global measles outbreak centred around Disneyland, and the ensuing debate in the news, in health networks and elsewhere about “vaccine hesitancy”. The research hopes to better understand how parents make decisions about vaccination, what influence media coverage of disease outbreaks has on family medical decision-making, and how health organizations can better support parents to make informed decisions about the health of their children.
“Our project explores the emergence of vaccine hesitancy as a polarizing and contentious social, ethical and political problem,” Greenberg says. “We want to know how people form their understanding of vaccines. Is vaccine hesitancy as big a risk to public health as media coverage will have us believe? Finally, what impact do media narratives of disease outbreak have on public understanding of vaccines and vaccination?”
Funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, CIRN is an interdisciplinary network of public health researchers from across Canada. Greenberg is collaborating with Professor Michelle Driedger, Canada Research Chair in Environment and Health Risk Communication at the University of Manitoba, and Dr. Eve Dube, a medical anthropologist at Université Laval and member of the Scientific Group on Immunization at the Quebec National Institute of Public Health.
Friday, September 25, 2015 in Communication News, News, Research
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