Fighting Vaccine Hesitancy in a Misinformation Age

In this episode of Noise Filter, hosts MarkAlain Dery, DO, MPH, Eric Griggs, MD, and David Roston unpack the growing challenge of vaccine hesitancy. The discussion highlights how misinformation, historical distrust, and perceived risk contribute to hesitancy, which is not always rooted in anti-vax sentiment. Using data and trends, especially concerning measles resurgence in states with low measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination rates, the team stresses respectful dialogue, trusted messengers, and easier access as key strategies.

Dery: Welcome to Noise Filter. My name is MarkAlain Dery. Today with us is Dr. Eric Griggs, who’s a community health specialist, and David Roston, who’s a health communication specialist, as well as producer of our show. Today we’re going to be talking about a really fascinating article that we thought was worth sharing. It’s called How to Talk About Vaccines in an Era of Scientific Mistrust. We found this one in the mid-April 2025 issue of Scientific American, and so let’s go through it. There’s a lot of information here.

Why does vaccine hesitancy happen? Well, let’s clarify, first, that vaccine hesitancy isn’t just about being anti-vax. It’s really a spectrum. Some people delay vaccines, some refuse certain ones, and others just reject them entirely. What are the reasons? Eric, before I toss to you, I’m just going to talk about the big three—the ones that are the most common. Number 1 is misinformation and the power of fear. Number 2 is just the historical context and the cultural distrust that is associated with it. Lastly, it’s the personal risk-versus-benefit trap. Eric, there’s a lot there. If you just want to jump on one of those and just let us know what some of your thoughts are?

Griggs: Yes. This takes me back to the work that we did painstakingly, a labor of love during the pandemic. There’s a lot of confusion that exists. A lot of people, if you remember, they were like, “I’m not going to get a vaccine, but I’ll get my shot. I don’t take a flu vaccine, but I’ll take the shot.” So clarifying and starting at the basic level and building back up so people understand exactly what we’re talking about, and then you can get into what it does.

Dery: Absolutely. David, any thoughts?

Roston: Well, we started talking about vaccine hesitancy more in popular culture around COVID-19 because it was such a huge issue that affected everyone in the world. Vaccine hesitancy was very much in our faces as something that we can talk about. As the pandemic [receded]—we’re 5 years, over 5 years now since it started—and it’s gone down. As we start to see this epidemic of measles coming up, vaccine hesitancy is coming back into the conversation.  We’re revisiting certain conversations that we had 5 years ago, and something that we’re seeing the effects of right now [is] what’s going on with this measles outbreak.

Dery: A hundred percent. I think one of the things that this article does really well is that it actually has some great graphs that I want us to look at really quickly. What’s really fascinating about these—and we’ll go over these graphs really quickly before we wrap up here—is that you could see in red that Texas—the red represents the state of Texas. You can see that 95% threshold [and] 95%, as we know, is what we need. We need vaccines to be above that 95% line so that we can remain protected. Your community immunity, or what we refer to as herd immunity. [Your community] can remain free of measles. These are MMR [measles-mumps-rubella] vaccine rates amongst kindergartners. You can see, over from 2012 to about 2019, it remained above that 95% threshold. But you could see during the COVID outbreak in 2020 and afterwards when vaccine hesitancy, as you guys were both just referring to, dipped below that 95% threshold. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that, of course, Texas then had an outbreak of measles.

What’s even more interesting is that purple line below that that shows that just the US in general has been below that 95% threshold. Remember, we eradicated measles in the US in 2000. But vaccine hesitancy has been going up, and then as a result, vaccine delivery has been going down.

Before I toss to both of you, I want to show you one more slide. Look at these states. They are grossly below that 95% threshold. You have Georgia; you have Colorado; you have Wisconsin, Alaska, and Idaho. That’s brutally low. The easiest prediction that I’ve ever made is, will we see measles in those states? Yes. I strongly believe here in 2025, we’re going to see measles in those states. I’m just going to toss to Eric and then David.

Griggs: Yes. One of the things that I want to [do]—and we learned this by the school of hard knocks—is not to polarize the conversation. Vaccine hesitancy is not necessarily a judgment call. Being hesitant because you want more information is one thing. And understand, when you’re having these conversations, you might not change anyone’s mind. Our job is to just give you the information and the stats, the hard facts as we know them, and they’ve been evidence-based and proven over the years. Open the door for the conversation. You let people know that, “Hey, I’m not trying to change your mind. I just want you to make informed decisions. I understand you might be hesitant because things are a little confusing. Here’s some information.” Open the door for dialogue. MarkAlain, if you remember, we learned the hard way not to inject emotion into the conversation. Typically, the people—when you give them enough information, if you wait long enough—they’ll come back and they’ll want your help.

And David?

Roston: Yes. The name of our show is Noise Filter because we are filtering through the noise of misinformation that’s out there. I think that in this age of social media, so much misinformation gets amplified and is given a platform. It’s really important to present the science, present the data, and to look at it in a very critical way. Even just looking at some of these graphs—which is very concerning and we can see the trends—what’s going on now associated with, as you were saying, the reduction of vaccine deliveries. It’s pretty simple to see the relation of what’s going on right now.

Dery: Yes, I think to Eric’s point, as public health educators, communicators, we can do our best to present information in a clear and scientific way. It’s on others to make those decisions that best fit their lifestyle or their kids. We talked about it in another video. This is a really serious disease.

Speaker?: Yes. Polarization. Emotional polarization leads to politicization, which leads to us getting nowhere. And that’s how we ended up where we are. So be objective. Present the facts like MarkAlain has done.

Speaker?: Wait, can you say that again? Say that again. I really liked that, but I didn’t catch it.

Speaker?: Yes. Polarization. Emotional polarization leads to politicization, which leads to the destruction of public health and the things that we’re doing now.

Speaker?: Right.

Dery: A hundred percent. So this is a segment on combating vaccine hesitancy. How can we do it? This Scientific American [article] that is going to use scientific data to determine how can one combat that hesitancy. The first recommendation they make is [to] listen first and then debate later. Instead of leading with stats, ask, “What worries you about vaccines?” Correct myths gently. I think that’s probably a great way to do that. Have you ever heard of the truth sandwich? Start with a fact. Address the myth, and then reinforce the fact. Examples are “Vaccines are safe. There’s no link to autism, and here’s how we know.”

A couple other recommendations they make is [to] leverage trusted messengers. That’s so important. I think it’s important either to reach out to your doctors—if they are your trusted messengers—or your clergy, local community clergy, or local community leaders.

Lastly, make access easy and transparent. This way, if someone has to take time off work or travel hours to get a vaccine, they’re less likely to do it. Mobile clinics and pharmacies are very, very helpful as well. I turn back to you guys. Thoughts?

Speaker? Yes. Understand that this is a conversation that’s going to take place over a period of time. It’s very rare you’ll change someone’s mind in one conversation. Be open to the discussion. It’s civil discourse, and control your facial expressions if you can.

Dery: Thank you for tuning in. Please subscribe; leave a comment below; like. It helps the algorithms. We appreciate you guys being here.

Roston?: Thanks so much.

Griggs? Thanks.