'Childhood vaccine mandates: are they tackling the right problem?' with Prof Katie Attwell

Past Event

Date
 24 January 2023, 12:15pm - 1:15pm

Location
 Oxford Martin School & Online
34 Broad Street (corner of Holywell and Catte Streets), Oxford, OX1 3BD

Event Recording:

Undervaccination results from both deliberate vaccine refusal and access or logistical problems.

These barriers are commonly thought to affect very different social groups. However, popular and political discourse emphasises the vaccine refusing parent as the policy target of new vaccine mandates. Discourses around the need for strict mandatory policies may or may not acknowledge disadvantaged populations facing access problems, and the policies themselves may or may not differentiate between underserved populations and those who deliberately refuse vaccines.

This talk explores how these two distinct categories of under-vaccinated populations are treated within vaccine mandates in Australia, Italy, France, and California, and why it matters.

Attwell Katie

Associate Professor Katie Attwell
Visiting Researcher, Vaccines and Society Unit, University of Oxford

Associate Professor Katie Attwell is a distinguished mid-career researcher and a global expert on mandatory vaccination policies whose lead author work is published in Pediatrics, Nature, Milbank Quarterly, Pediatrics, and Social Science and Medicine. She is a political scientist by training and a vaccination social scientist at the University of Western Australia, where she leads VaxPolLab.

A/Prof Attwell is the national Chair of the Australian organisation COSSI: the Collaboration on Social Science and Immunisation, and a visiting scholar with the Vaccines and Society Unit at Oxford University. As part of her three-year Australia Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award fellowship funded by the Australian Government (awarded 2018), A/Prof Attwell conducted field research on mandatory childhood vaccination in Australia, Italy, France, and California. In early 2023 she is touring the Northern Hemisphere to share the findings from this project.