Report

The power of prevention

This report from UK think tank Reform focuses on three broad factors involved in people’s attitudes to vaccination — confidence, complacency and convenience.

Vaccines play a vital role in preventing disease and allowing people to live healthy lives. After clean water, they are the most effective public health intervention in the world.

However, even before the pandemic, a worrying trend was emerging in which the uptake of key immunisation programmes in the UK, and particularly childhood vaccines such as MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) and DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis), was declining. This has led to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, hospitalisation and tragic, entirely avoidable deaths.

While welcome progress has been made, particularly since the pandemic, in diversifying how vaccines are delivered (the ‘supply side’ of vaccination), there has been a less concerted approach to the behavioural drivers (the ‘demand side’) of uptake.

This briefing paper focuses on three broad factors involved in people’s attitudes to vaccination — confidence, complacency and convenience — which in turn influence uptake.