The mom who chooses not to vaccinate her child believes she is making the best possible decision for her child. She is not careless, and she is not stupid. She is doing what every parent does: trying to protect her kid with the information she has. Our goal is never to tell her she is wrong. It is to understand how she got there, and to reach her with the best available evidence in a way she can hear. The premise underneath all of this is that the person in front of you is reasonable and acting out of care.
Which is why, when it comes to comms, canned messages do not work.
I have been doing this in the public eye via social media for about six years now, and in that time, I have encountered a lot of characters, a lot of questions, and a lot of pushback. What I love about our platform is that we work painstakingly hard to create a place where all folks can come and be heard. This includes skeptics, the uncertain, and the simply curious, who have questions about vaccines, antibiotics, fluoride, or whatever it happens to be that day. While we love our loyal readers who understand the value of what we do, we’re not interested in only speaking to people who get it. That feels like preaching to the choir, and that’s not where the work is.
So instead, we spend most of our time behind the scenes of social media, constantly listening, conducting surveys, doing interviews, and running sentiment and thematic qualitative analyses of our messages, comments, and DMs, all in service of understanding the patterns beneath what people are actually saying.
A huge focus for us (obviously) is vaccines.
One thing to say upfront: most people are not vaccine-hesitant. The large majority still vaccinate themselves and their kids. This is not a piece about a country that has turned against vaccines, because it has not. It is about the smaller set of conversations that are harder, and how to have them better.
