The VAX-TRUST project addresses vaccine hesitancy in seven European countries with a systematic and evidence-based approach. Interventions, targeting healthcare professionals, draw from behavioural and social theories. A checklist, inspired by the TIDieR (Template for Intervention Description and Replication), ensures a detailed description of actions, transparency and replicability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough Covid-19 was not the first pandemic, it was unique in the scale and intensity with which societies responded. Countries reacted differently to the threat posed by the new virus. The public health crisis affected European societies in many ways.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article presents the design of a seven-country study focusing on childhood vaccines, Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy in Europe (VAX-TRUST), developed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study consists of (a) situation analysis of vaccine hesitancy (examination of individual, socio-demographic and macro-level factors of vaccine hesitancy and analysis of media coverage on vaccines and vaccination and (b) participant observation and in-depth interviews of healthcare professionals and vaccine-hesitant parents. These analyses were used to design interventions aimed at increasing awareness on the complexity of vaccine hesitancy among healthcare professionals involved in discussing childhood vaccines with parents.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile recruitment is an essential aspect of any research project, its challenges are rarely acknowledged. We intend to address this gap by discussing the challenges to the participation of vaccine-hesitant parents defined here as a hard-to-reach, hidden and vulnerable population drawing on extensive empirical qualitative evidence from seven European countries. The difficulties in reaching vaccine-hesitant parents were very much related to issues concerning trust, as there appears to be a growing distrust in experts, which is extended to the work developed by researchers and their funding bodies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearch on why people use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) shows clients value the CAM consultation, where they feel listened to and empowered to control their own health. Such 'empowerment' through CAM use is often theorised as reflecting wider neoliberal imperatives of self-responsibility. CAM users' perspectives are well studied, but there has been little sociological analysis of interactions within the CAM consultation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis Comment piece summarises current challenges regarding routine vaccine uptake in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and provides recommendations on how to increase uptake. To implement these recommendations, the article points to evidence-based resources that can support health-care workers, policy makers and communicators.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: Increased mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic have become a major concern among young adults. Our aim was to understand which COVID-19-related questions predicted mental well-being during the outbreak.
Methods: Two cross-sectional datasets were used.
The contestation of expertise is perhaps nowhere more pronounced than in the field of health and well-being, on which this article focuses. A multitude of practices and communities that stand in contentious relationships with established forms of medical expertise and promote personalised modes of self-care have proliferated across Euro-American societies. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography in three domains - body-mind-spirit therapies, vaccine hesitancy and consumer-grade digital self-tracking - we map such practices through the concept of 'everyday fringe medicine'.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFScand J Public Health
August 2020
The aim of this study is to analyse the development of Scandinavian research on complementary and alternative medicine in terms of publication pattern and general content. Furthermore we will map research networks. : This study is based on bibliometric methods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: The aim of this research was to study health-related and sociodemographic determinants of the use of different complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments in Europe and differences in CAM use in various European countries.
Methods: The study was based on a design-based logistic regression analysis of the European Social Survey (ESS), Round 7. We distinguished four CAM modalities: manual therapies, alternative medicinal systems, traditional Asian medical systems and mind-body therapies.