Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider

She's the author of Calling the Shots, Why Parents Reject Vaccines, and has spent years studying how trust, identity, and misinformation influence public health.

And today we'll be talking about what drives vaccine hesitancy, how misinformation takes root, and more importantly, what we can do about it.

Dr. Reich, welcome.

Thanks so much for having me.

So Jennifer, you've spent years listening to parents who are skeptical of vaccines and I want to start there.

What have you learned by really listening to these stories and what might we overlook when it comes to these parents' concerns?

I think it can be easy to dismiss people who believe misinformation as anti-science or irresponsible.

But your work shows us that there's so much more beneath the surface.

And you've alluded to this a bit.

What are some of the emotional or social reasons people might reject vaccines?

Wow.

Thank you for connecting the dots between this very, I would say, American idea of thinking about the individual and personal choice to thinking broadly about community health and how we tend to frame public health.

And I want to come back to something that you alluded to, and that is for many parents,

Making health care decisions is deeply tied to love, to identity, and a desire to do what's best for their children.

How does that intention sometimes lead people down a path of mistrust?

Yeah.

And further, we aren't necessarily taught how to communicate effectively with patients in our medical training, I would say.

And so building on that, you've said that how we talk to people matters just as much as what we say.

So what common mistakes from your perspective do healthcare professionals like me or even well-meaning friends make when trying to change someone's mind about this?

Yeah.