How Quebec's health-care system uses "vaccine whisperers" to keep "vaccine hesitancy" from turning to anti-vax

A French neonatal specialist named Dr Arnaud Gagneur has created a "vaccine counselling" program within Quebec's health-care system that uses a non-judgmental technique called "motivational interviewing" with parents of newborns to allay their fears about vaccines.

The program doesn't target anti-vax or vaccine denial, but rather, "vaccine hesitancy," in which parents with a cursory awareness of anti-vax talking points infer (reasonably enough) that if there's a lot of controversy about vaccines, there might be some reason to be concerned about it. Anti-vax talking points about taking "too many vaccines at once" or the disproven links between vaccination and autism, as well as inaccurate scare stories about mercury and live viruses, can seem plausible to a casual observer.

The "motivational interviewing" technique draws parents out about their concerns. They don't tell parents that their fears are wrong, but when the parents have finished expressing their fears, they reply with the best scientific evidence of actual known side-effects of vaccines; the known facts about Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent study linking autism with vaccination; and the best evidence about the benefits of vaccination. They tell the parents that their concerns reflect a desire to protect their kids and keep them healthy, and make a connection between vaccination and health.

The nonjudgmental approach is crucial, but so is the timing: the counsellors talk to parents months before their children's first scheduled vaccination, giving them lots of time to think this over, so the parents aren't feeling cornered when their pediatricians call them up to schedule that first round of shots. Read the rest