The Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology Seminar Series, together with the Uehiro Oxford Institute and TORCH Medical Humanities.

The vaccine hesitancy concept has been used in technical and policy circles over the last decade to explain challenges with vaccine uptake, with the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring vaccine hesitancy a top ten threat to human health in 2019. However, the concept has also been controversial. Even some experts most closely associated with the term argue that it has been inappropriately used to blame individuals for systemic failures, especially during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. This paper traces the emergence of the concept of vaccine hesitancy, drawing on in-depth interviews with global experts and analysis of documents and publications from a WHO working group that developed the concept between 2012 and 2014. Our analysis highlights several key dynamics that help to explain how the idea of vaccine hesitancy has developed and circulated amongst technical experts, academic researchers, policymakers, the media, and the public.

16:00-16:45 Katie Attwell, Vaccine Hesitancy: The History of an Idea
16:45-16:55 Sally Frampton (History, University of Oxford): “Vaccine Hesitancy” and “Anti-vaxx”
16:55-17:10 Isabela Cabrera Lalinde (Translational Health Sciences, Social Sciences, University of Oxford) and
Philippa Matthews (Francis Crick Institute and University College London)
17:10-17:30 General Discussion

No booking required.