How Could Digital Tools Help Fight Against Anti-Vaccination?

Anti-vaccination movements lure increasingly more people into skipping potentially life-saving immunization against infectious diseases, such as measles, mumps, or rubella, highly impairing herd immunity for entire communities. Social media platforms could restrict the reach of anti-vax messages, groups, and activities, with algorithms recommending tailor-made content and health apps providing information about vaccinations. Here’s our collection of the most recent steps and digital tools supporting the fight against anti-vaccination and its believers.

300 percent increase in measles globally

In a widely shared social media post from around two years ago, a person planning to travel with their toddler mentioned having heard that certain airline companies vaccinate people through the air conditioning system. The person was reaching out to seek additional information on which airlines were doing this. Now, you can laugh or feel terrible about a message that is wrong on many levels (starting with the absolutely zero availability of airborne vaccines), the fact is that fake news and conspiracy theories around vaccination are thriving – and this unfortunately already shows in the statistics.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has raised alarm over a 300 percent increase in the case of measles globally in the first quarter of 2019 compared with last year, and it declared vaccination hesitancy as one of its ten most important threats to global health. So far this year, 170 countries have reported 112,163 measles cases to the WHO, while in April 2018, 163 countries reported 28,124 cases.

The disease has made a comeback in both the developed and the developing world for different reasons. Measles cases in Europe are at a 20-year high, and 72 children and vulnerable adults died of it in 2018, twice as many as a year before. New York City's mayor declared a public health emergency in parts of Brooklyn in April 2019, after a measles outbreak emerged in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, where some had resisted vaccination on religious grounds. The WHO said that the most dramatic rise in cases - a 700-percent increase compared with last year - has been reported on the African continent, which has weaker vaccination coverage than other regions.

Source: www.medium.com

Skepticism is as infectious as a disease

Although lack of access to vaccination and religious reasons add to the causes of vaccination hesitancy, the biggest problem is lately the global spread of the anti-vaccination movement fueled by various celebrities, anti-establishment politicians and political movements, and social media platforms. One of the loudest anti-vaccine voices and presenter of an assumed (though completely false and scientifically absolutely not supported) link between vaccines and autism is actress Jenny McCarthy. But Jim Carrey, Selma Blair, Kirstie Alley or Charlie Sheen have all expressed views either against vaccination itself or the idea of mandatory vaccination.

While the phenomenon of skepticism towards vaccination or medicine in general is not new, it’s recurring with a newly found resilience. As an example from the past, we could mention the refusal of numerous British parents to vaccinate their children in the 1970s and 1980s against whooping cough or pertussis, in response to the publication of a report in 1974 that credited 36 negative neurological reactions to the whole-cell pertussis vaccine. This caused a decrease in the pertussis vaccine uptake in the UK from 81% in 1974 to 31% in 1980, eventually resulting in a pertussis outbreak in the UK, putting severe strain and pressure on the National Health System.

It seems that the toll of infectious diseases on human life, such as that of measles, mumps, and rubella, has already been largely erased from the collective memory of humankind. Parallelly, the rise of fake news and conspiracy theories about the greediness of vaccine manufacturing companies and the fear of the potential harm that vaccines allegedly cause has taken over significant space in the public discourse. Not to mention emphasizing the rights of the individual to decide for themselves and the fight to revoke compulsory vaccination. The latter is potentially even more harmful, as it damages herd immunity.

Source: www.labblog.uofmhealth.org

Access to the right information empowers – access to the wrong one can make you die

Contrary to the false claims of fake news and conspiracy theories, the WHO estimates that vaccination is one of the most cost-effective ways of avoiding disease: it currently prevents 2-3 million deaths a year, and a further 1.5 million could be avoided if global coverage of vaccinations improved. With those impressive numbers in mind, how come the anti-vaccination movement has become so strong?

As mentioned before, one of the reasons might be the forgetfulness of human communities with regards to the consequences of infectious diseases, or the ‘invisibility’ of some of the vaccine preventable diseases. Yet another significant reason and at the same time a unique feature of the latest anti-vaccination uptake is the fast and easy spread of misinformation on new media platforms. In January, a report published by the Royal Society for Public Health found that half of all parents with small children have been exposed to misinformation about vaccines on social media.“Anti-vaxx” groups target the parents of new babies, posting stories that claim babies have died or have been harmed by vaccination. A US group called Stop Mandatory Vaccination, run by Larry Cook, was censured by the UK’s advertising watchdog in November over a paid-for Facebook post, following a complaint by the mother of a young baby in the UK. The problem is so widespread that EU health commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis has warned against the peddling of “fake news” about vaccine safety.

These viral messages work just as political propaganda, and it’s also not surprising that some of the most vocal opponents prove to be populist politicians such as Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen in France. The key is in the repetition of such messages: if you listen to a negative message several times over a longer period, it sticks with you and may influence your attitude no matter what you rationally think. In an age when the problem is not the access to health information anymore but rather that most people have to face a data overflow, finding the right piece of knowledge will be the biggest challenge – as the ‘right’ information will make you empowered but fake information might get you into serious health trouble.

Source: www.wired.com

Social media to the rescue?

That’s why the appropriate assessment of online information and the role of social media giants in restricting space for the spread of such message is becoming crucial in clamping down anti-vaxxers. The former necessitates the education of internet users about how to evaluate online medical information (here is our guide to it), while the second requires a systemic response from such companies as Facebook, YouTube or Amazon.

Zuckerberg’s company is the number one hotbed of misleading health information. As it has been facing a lot of criticism, in August 2018, Facebook deleted dozens of pages dedicated to fringe or holistic medicine in an apparent crackdown on pseudoscience. As the measure was clearly not enough, in March 2019, Facebook announced that it will no longer allow anti-vax messages to be promoted through ads or recommendations, and will make it less prominent in search results. The social network will not take down anti-vaccine posts entirely, however. The company also said it was exploring ways to give users more context about vaccines from “expert organizations.”

Other platforms are increasing their efforts, too. Pinterest, a digital platform popular with parents, took an unusual step to crack down on the proliferation of anti-vaccination propaganda in February 2019. It tweaked its search bar – if you type “vaccine” or “anti-vax”, nothing will pop up. A month later, Amazon yanked at least five anti-vaccination documentaries questioning the safety of vaccines from its Prime Video streaming platform. Moreover, GoFundMe announced in March 2019 that it has banned anti-vaxxer campaigns collecting money for spreading misinformation.

Still, we believe that YouTube, Facebook, or Google should not only make anti-vax messages disappear, but they should also be pushing for even better visibility of ‘vaccination advocates’ or influencers at the expense of accounts spreading misinformation or outright fake news. As the WHO says, health workers, especially those embedded in communities, remain the most trusted advisors and influencers of vaccination decisions, and they must be supported to provide trusted, credible information on vaccines. This could only happen with knowledge bases, such as Google, Facebook, or YouTube pushing back online anti-vaccination propaganda with efficient measures – thus we expect them to step up their game even more in the coming months.

Source: www.wsj.com

With algorithms, VR and Siri against anti-vaxxers

How can digital health tools outside the realm of communication and social media platforms help? Well, there are quite a few ways to bring health technology into the fight against anti-vaxxers, but we have a couple of ideas for the developers, too.

Sophisticated algorithms could play a role in addressing vaccine hesitancy. Just as Amazon and Netflix are adept at suggesting products and movies that ‘people like you’ might enjoy, health systems could build individually tailored messages most likely to resonate with individuals.

Alternatively, innovative solutions could provide new opportunities to inform those at risk that they should be vaccinated, for example through reminders via SMS alerts and dedicated health apps. For example, VaccApp has been designed to help parents keep track of vaccinations. Devised by the Vienna Vaccine Safety Initiative, the app covers 25 vaccines, including those on the routine immunisation schedule, vaccines recommended for particular population sub-groups, and travel vaccines. Voice assistants, such as Siri or Amazon Alexa could also be pulled into the fight in the future. Not only could they help with the easy scheduling of vaccinations and keeping the vaccination diaries up-to-date, but they could also potentially “talk” about the benefits of the step with users.

Some other innovations might mitigate the discomfort that children feel when getting vaccinated. In a study of 244 children at Sansum Clinic locations in Santa Barbara and Lompoc, California, roughly half of the children were given virtual reality goggles to view ocean scenes while getting their seasonal flu shot. Parents reported that their sons and daughters experienced 48 percent less pain and 52 percent less fear, and the clinicians mentioned even higher numbers – 75 percent less pain and 71 percent less fear. The Hermes Pardini Laboratories’ VR Vaccine campaign battled children’s fear of taking vaccine shots wonderfully. Children could immerse themselves in the virtual world of a lively cartoon where they can feel like superheroes building a shield against monsters by getting the “Fire Fruit” – the actual shot in reality.

No matter whether it’s VR, artificial intelligence, health apps, or measures of social media platforms, the most important objective is to show everyone that the benefits of vaccination are a matter of fact. NOT an opinion. 

Dr. Bertalan Mesko, PhD is The Medical Futurist and Director of The Medical Futurist Institute analyzing how science fiction technologies can become reality in medicine and healthcare. As a geek physician with a PhD in genomics, he is a keynote speaker and an Amazon Top 100 author.

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