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As a national vaccination programme begins in the UK’s fight against COVID-19, we look back to 1950s America when a group of teenagers (and Elvis) inspired a fresh look at pro-vaccine public health information.

Vaccination programmes are considered to be one of the greatest public health achievements in history. Yet recent years have seen a rise in vaccine-preventable diseases like measles as a result of the ‘immunisation gap’ – the trend for parents not to have their child vaccinated because of anxiety about unforeseen health consequences.

When we spoke to historian Dr Stephen Mawdsley in 2016 about the vaccination gap, his explanation was that “we have largely forgotten what it’s like to face an epidemic sweeping through a population.” Four years later and in the midst of a global pandemic, the memory is all too recent.

He explains how the rapid delivery of public health programmes is often complicated by a range of social, economic and political factors. In the case of polio in 1950s America, it was demographics: teenagers were a difficult group to reach. Two years after the vaccine was licensed in 1955, as many as 30% still had no inoculations, and yet a third of all new cases were in teens. The public health message wasn’t getting through, and new strategies were needed.

Mawdsley’s research uncovered how young people themselves became the answer to the problem in what might be the first, largest and most successful case of teen health activism of the time. This fight waged against vaccine noncompliance in 1950s America, he suggests, could provide important lessons for the world today.
Category
Academic
Tags
Cambridge, Cambridge University, Polio
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