Rapid literature review on motivating hesitant population groups in Europe to vaccinate

Monitoring and addressing the concerns of groups of individuals who are hesitant towards vaccination is a key public health challenge, as without adequate uptake levels, the successes of immunisation programmes are compromised. In order to explore this further ECDC has published a report which provides an overview of the knowledge and research related to vaccine hesitancy in the EU/EEA countries.

The Rapid literature review on motivating hesitant population groups in Europe to vaccinate focuses on identifying what is known about the following areas: who are the hesitant populations; what are the enablers and barriers to vaccination uptake for these hesitant populations; what is known about successful interventions targeting these populations, especially interventions provided for and by healthcare providers.

This report is launched in the context of the pre-conference workshop on vaccine hesitancy, co-organised by ECDC on the 15th October at the European Public Health Conference (EUPHA) in Milan, together with the Italian Society of Hygiene, Preventive Medicine and Public Health as well as the EUPHA Section on Infectious Disease Control. This workshop focuses on exploring possible ways to motivate hesitant population groups to vaccinate, based on what is known so far about them and using the concrete examples of childhood and human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, as well as hesitancy among healthcare professionals.