Saar Kuzi
Alessandra Coutinho Fernandes
William Cope
Richard Tapping
Kashif Ahmad
Reda Sadki
Shubhra Kanti Karmaker Santu
Adam P Rusch
Elle Meisner
Nereyda Ochoa
Landon J. Kunzelman
James DotimasFA16 Immunization Module’s Updates
Technology as a barrier to vaccination.
American society has reached a point where technology has become very accessible to a significant portion of the population. Various forms of technology haver interwoven themselves within almost every aspect of our lives. Our watches are able to call our friends and cell phones have allowed us to put almost an unlimited amount of information in our pockets. I believe such access to technology has become a barrier to vaccination. In the past, it was difficult for people to come into contact with information from another professional’s field and, as a result, they were more dependent on the opinion of other professionals regarding topics of which they were unfamiliar. Without websites such as WebMD, patients had a more difficult time learning about medical issues. It is great that the general population can be more educated about medicine (and really any topic). However, in the case of vaccines this availability of information has led people to have ideas that are not validated by science. According to Dr. Tapping’s lecture, immunization¸ there has never been on death that was proven to be associated with vaccines. Despite this, all a patient has to do is search “Death by vaccine” to see that the website deathbyvaccination.com is the first website to appear. Furthermore, the website Naturalnews.com contains an article titled, “Ten Reasons why you Shouldn’t Vaccinate your Children.” The article contains poor arguments, but someone who is not trained in analytical thinking or is genuinely concerned about their child’s health may be persuaded not to vaccinate their kid. Due to technology’s presence in our lives, public outreach and education is a growing challenge that must be faced in order to provide the general population the peace of mind in order to vaccinate their kids- and to understand that it benefits the entire community.
Hey all, thanks for reading my update and taking the time to comment. I think that you all bring up some very good points. It probably would have been better for me to have written something along the lines of aspects of technology can serve as a barrier to vaccination. I completely agree that technology benefits the medical field because we can increase our own knowledge and, in turn, provide better care to our patients. I also think that @Emily has a good point in that vaccines are a very common issue for parents which can perpetuate the myths surrounding them.
@Robbie I think you make some really interesting points. I agree with @Callum that people will tend to believe anything they read online. For example, those Ten Ways to XYZ articles tend to be written in convincing ways with pseudoscience explanations. To the average person, this seems logical/sound and that would lead them to take the information in the article as the truth. Peer reviewed articles are available, but the average person wouldn't search for those and truly understand the material in it. It's much simpler to read a short list on naturalnews.com or some other site like it.
I absolutely agree with your points and @Callum brings up a good point as well--health literacy, or lack thereof, is more to blame for the spread and confirmation of misinformation. Something definitely needs to be done about this.
Really interesting argument Robbie! I can definitely see your point about the way easy access to websites like the ones you noted could result in the generation, or (as @JasonPhung noted) affirmation of incorrect ideas about vaccines. More so, I think the fact that vaccination is something that nearly every parent in U.S. will encounter during standard medical checks for their children means there is a larger overall quantity of incorrect opinions and a larger base through which these incorrect opinions can spread via technology (as compared to nearly every other childhood treatment which would likley have significantly less attention online as they only relevant to a select population of parents with ill children).
However, I also appreciate the positive side of technology brought up by @CallumDewar, as it can also serves as a useful source of new medical awareness. Further efforts by medical organizations to utilize technology to create a wider distribution of correct information and reliable sources for parents to ask vaccination-related questions could have a powerful positive effect.
It's a very interesting point that technology is serving as a barrier to vaccination. While the internet does serve as a wonderful source of information, there is also plenty of misinformation as you have pointed out. People who are anti-vaccination are able to find many sources to affirm their false beliefs, while conveniently ignoring the studies and scientific articles. Unfortunately, it becomes very difficult to change someone's mind once they think their beliefs are the truth.
I like your argument that tech is making people more reliant on websites like WebMD, I hadn't really thought of that before. As a more general point, I guess I am wary of the prompt itself. Is it really technology that is creating the barrier to vaccination, or is it more of a wider health literacy issue? While there will always be sources like deathbyvaccination.com, technology also provides us with the tools to find the peer-reviewed scholarly articles that give the subject a more professional perspective. In my opinion this is more of an issue focusing on the fact that most people will believe anything they read online.