About the Event
Speakers:
- Julie Bettinger (PhD, MPH) is Professor at the UBC Vaccine Evaluation Center, Department of Pediatrics, where she studies vaccine safety, hesitancy, and uptake, and leads the Canadian National Vaccine Safety (CANVAS) network.
- Devon Greyson (PhD, MLIS) is Assistant Professor at the UBC School of Population and Public Health, where they study the influence of information and information-based interventions on population health outcomes.
School vaccine mandates are population health interventions that require monitoring and communicating about the vaccination status of school-aged children, with the aim of controlling infectious disease in the population. While such policies are usually associated with higher vaccine coverage in the pediatric population, in cases where mandates are highly controversial they may be ineffective or risk unintended consequences such as backlash; therefore, monitoring of population attitudes toward new mandates is important. With the implementation of the Vaccine Status Reporting Regulation (VSRR) in 2019, BC became the 3rd Canadian province with a school vaccine mandate. This presentation will share results of monitoring to date of population attitudes toward the components of the VSRR and describe next steps in policy implementation and surveillance to minimize risks of unintended consequences.
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