Vaccines represent one of medicine’s most important tools for preventing disease and, along with improved sanitation and nutrition, correlate to improved public health over the past century. Despite these successes, our approach to vaccine policy has evolved in ways that have undermined both public trust and optimal health outcomes. This paper does not question the value of vaccination as a public health strategy. It examines how current policies, practices, and messaging may be counterproductive to achieving the highest levels of protection against truly threatening communicable diseases.
This paper calls for a recalibration: One that protects the public from serious threats without overreaching in ways that fracture trust or deny children access to essential aspects of society. It advocates for a policy grounded not just in the availability of vaccines, but in the nature of the diseases they target, their effectiveness in protecting others, the needs of individual patients, and the broader consequences mandates may carry.
