Vaccination resilience: Building and sustaining confidence in and demand for vaccination

Despite the strong scientific and medical consensus around usefulness and safety of vaccines, a proportion of people remain concerned and unsure about vaccines and/or immunization programs. Vaccine hesitancy is a term now commonly used to refer to the heterogeneous group of people with different levels of concerns, doubts and indecision about vaccination who occupy the middle of a continuum between those who refuse all vaccines with conviction and those who actively demand vaccination. Vaccine hesitancy has been the focus of much attention in the past decade and is now recognized as a serious global threat to the success of vaccination programs (defined as international, national, regional or local organizations charged with preventing disease, disability, and death from vaccine-preventable diseases in children and adults)[1]. Much effort is being devoted in many countries to develop, implement and evaluate tools and interventions to better understand and address this complex problem. While ensuring that effective strategies to address vaccine hesitancy are available and used is of key importance; the emphasis on hesitancy must not eclipse the importance of encouraging and supporting those who accept vaccination. Currently, accepting vaccination is by far the most common vaccination decision, but this pro-vaccine social norm must not be taken for granted. Building and sustaining vaccination resilience is as critical as addressing vaccine hesitancy.