Moving beyond traditional methods of identifying and overcoming negative attitudes towards vaccination: the ACTION team
Turin, January 12, 2023
Turin, January 12, 2023 14.30
Palazzo Nuovo, Via Sant'Ottavio 20, Sala Incontri 1
Biblioteca di Filosofia
The CAT project. The Constructive Advanced Thinking (CAT) initiative aims to foster networks of excellent early career researchers committed to developing new ideas in order to understand and tackle current or emerging societal challenges. CAT was incubated within NetIAS in 2019 and is supported by 12 European Institutes for Advanced (IAS) Study, including Scienza Nuova Institut. The programme supports short stays and research visits of international and interdisciplinary teams of three to five early career researchers, possibly including a stakeholder and led by the Principle Investigator, at participating IAS in order to advance constructive thinking, stimulate discussion and expertise and knowledge exchange.
The ACTION project. It is consisting of early career researchers in the field of psychology (Angelos Kassianos), quantitative data analysis (Javier Alvarez Galvez), systematic reviewing (Antonio Rojas-Garcia), paediatrics/public heallth (Dr Ourania Kolokotroni) and health communication (Iliaria Montagni) as well as a stakeholder representative (Catharina Margaretha Reynen-de-Kat) to tackle the spread of anti-vaccination messages both in physical interactions (for example within networks like parents’ unions) and in the web (for example in social media and web forums). The ACTION team will be meeting twice a year and virtually in between. They will liaise with local researcher helping them to (a) make a critical review of the literature and relevant policy documents including those available through the stakeholder (WHO Europe) during year 1; (b) critically discuss findings from Case Studies conducted at the team members’ institutions and that will be discussed with local experts during their meetings including interviews with journalists and academics/researchers during years 2 and 3; and (c) develop a policy document that will translate research evidence into policy proposals for dissemination to WHO Europe country-members and write-up funding applications to ensure that the team will be active after the end of the CAT funding. The stakeholder representative will be advising on translating evidence into a policy document. The evidence to be discussed from the Case Studies (supported by external funders) are related to (a) understanding how attitudes of young people towards vaccination are built from different information sources, both on- and off-line using a mixed methods approach interviewing and surveying students at Bordeaux; (b) understanding how participants in a virtual online network spread vaccination-related attitudes (social contagion) using funding established at the University of Cyprus and (c) exploring innovative methods to assess social contagion of vaccination attitudes using Computer Agent-Based Modelling with simulations at the University of Cadiz. Pathways to action are also discussed.
Partecipants
- Angelos Kassianos (PI), Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow in Health Behavioural Science, University College London/ Cyprus University of Technology
- Antonio Rojas García, Postdoctoral Researcher in Public Health, University College London
- Ilaria Montagni, Researcher-Lecturer in Health Communication, University of Bordeaux
- Javier Alvarez-Galvez, Senior Research Fellow in Social and Health Data Science, University of Cadiz
- Ourania Kolokotroni, Pediatrician & Researcher in Epidemiology and Public Health, Cyprus University of Technology
With the additional participation of Tiziana Andina, Maurizio Ferraris, Gabriele Gava