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Vaccine Hesitancy in the Information Age
December 2, 2021 - 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
In 2019, the World Health Organization named vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten threats to global health. Vaccine hesitancy and mistrust in science are troubling trends that are growing despite unprecedented access to information – or perhaps because of it?
Are you curious about why someone you know won’t get vaccinated? Join us for a multi-disciplinary discussion and Q&A focused on understanding the root causes of scientific and institutional mistrust, combating misinformation, and learning communication tools to discuss vaccine hesitancy with friends, family, and the public. This is an opportunity to have your questions answered.
Hosted by UBC Department of Microbiology & Immunology Graduate Students and the UBC Vaccine Literacy Club.
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In line with UBC Health & Safety guidelines, proof of vaccination is required to attend the in-person event.
About the Panelists:
Dr. David King received his PhD in health psychology from UBC in 2013. He teaches undergraduate courses in personality psychology, the psychology of sex differences, and health psychology at UBC. His current research examines how stress unfolds within social contexts of varying size and complexity, from intimate relationships to broad sociocultural environments. In one area of research, he explores how people cope with the threat of infectious disease, from H1N1 and seasonal influenza to COVID-19. This work has highlighted an important role of empathy in motivating people to engage in recommended health precautions. In recent years, he has been especially attentive to the role of personality and human motivation in conspiracy theories, vaccine hesitancy, and other forms of extremism, with hopes of helping to improve science literacy through community engagement.
Dr. Krishana Sankar completed her PhD at the University of Toronto in the Faculty of Medicine. In addition to over ten years of research experience, she is also passionate about countering misinformation and has been dispelling misconceptions around healthcare issues for several years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has been working to share accurate scientific information with different communities in Canada and Guyana. Dr Sankar is currently the Science Advisor and Community Partnerships Lead for ScienceUpFirst, a Canadian campaign that aims to combat misinformation around COVID-19 and vaccines. Through her work with the organization, she has engaged and collaborated with several community partners that serve those in the underserved and marginalized populations. A major aim of her work is to remove barriers to access of accurate and relevant information to tackle misinformation in these groups.
Dr. Ève Dubé is a medical anthropologist. She is affiliated with Quebec National Institute of Public Health in Quebec, and is a research scientist at the Research Center of the CHU-Québec and an invited professor in the Department of Anthropology at Laval University. Her research program focuses on the sociocultural determinants of vaccination. She is the lead investigator of the Social Sciences and Humanities Network of the Canadian Immunization Research Network. Dr Dube is interested in how to enhance vaccine acceptance and uptake and is leading different projects around this issue. She sits on a number of committees as an expert on vaccine acceptance and hesitancy and was a member of the World Health Organization working group on vaccine hesitancy.
Dr. Manish Sadarangani is Director of the Vaccine Evaluation Center at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute and an Associate Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases, UBC Department of Pediatrics. He completed his undergraduate medical training and pediatric residency in Cambridge, Oxford, and London. He then completed his PhD with the Oxford Vaccine Group in the UK, developing novel vaccine candidates for protection against capsular group B meningococcal disease. He has worked in pediatrics throughout the world, including in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Australia, North America and Europe. His research links clinical trials with basic microbiology, immunology and epidemiology to address clinically relevant problems related to immunization and vaccine-preventable diseases. Specific research interests include bacterial vaccines, understanding vaccine-induced immunity, maternal immunization, antibiotic resistance and central nervous system infections.
