Dr. Jennifer Reich

But when we think about how all of us make decisions every day, even for people who love vaccines, who trust health, we all make decisions that are not always evidence-based in the ways that healthcare providers or experts would tell us.

I often mention that I'm not confused on the nutritional properties of ice cream, but I like ice cream, right?

And my kids and I go get ice cream on a hot day, and it has a social and emotional component to that decision, right?

It's not just health literacy that drives decision-making.

If it were, we would see record-breaking sales of broccoli and very few sales of wine.

And I don't think that's the pattern, right?

So what I find is really two social forces that encourage behaviors and encourage beliefs that actually encourage rejection of vaccines.

And so what I focus on in my work a lot is that we have sort of two things that have happened culturally over the last several decades.

One is that we've really oversold the idea that people are personally responsible for their health and that they can personally manage illness.

We tell people all the time that they can personally avoid disease if they work hard.

We encourage people to count their calories, count their steps, track their health.

And what we know is that's just scientifically untrue.

Most of disease is some combination of environment, genetics, and bad luck.

It's not entirely mitigatable.

And yet we've oversold that story.

That story is echoed across all sorts of corporations and products, but also even in our own doctor's offices, even in our own public health messaging.

And I think people believe this.

And then through that lens, then, it becomes much harder to persuade people that community strategies, which is really what vaccines are, they work best when lots of people in a community use them, are really important.

And instead, vaccines start to become seen as a technology of personal benefit.

So then individuals ask the question, do I need this?