Online Event: Trusting a Covid-19 Vaccine: Where Do We Stand?

In the face of rising cases of Covid-19 across the United States, many are hoping that the approval of a novel coronavirus vaccine, or vaccines, in 2021 may offer a way to move beyond the worst effects of the pandemic. Yet recent polls indicate that despite confidence-building measures by government officials, pharmaceutical companies, and social media platforms, public trust in a vaccine remains in doubt. Please join the CSIS-LSHTM High-Level Panel on Vaccine Confidence and Misinformation on Wednesday, December 16, from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. EST for a discussion of the panel’s first proposal in its recently released Call to Action: that Congress or a non-governmental entity convene an independent, bipartisan review panel to strengthen public trust and confidence in Covid-19 vaccines in the United States, by assessing the root causes of vaccine hesitancy and identifying concrete steps to be taken at the national, state, and local levels to strengthen vaccine demand and acceptance in the Covid-19 context.

Katherine E. Bliss, Senior Fellow with the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, will offer brief framing remarks followed by a presentation from Mollyann Brodie, Executive Vice President, COO, and Executive Director of Public Opinion and Survey Research at the Kaiser Family Foundation, on the state of U.S. public opinion on Covid-19 vaccines. J. Stephen Morrison, Panel Co-Chair, Senior Vice President, and Director of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center, will then introduce pre-recorded remarks from Congresswoman Susan Brooks (R-IN-5), and host a conversation with Congressman Ami Bera (D-CA-7) on the national appetite for a strategic, bipartisan dialogue on vaccines and values, and the prospects for how an independent review panel could guide the impending Covid-19 vaccine rollout in the United States. Cary Funk, Director of Science and Society Research at Pew Research Center; and Panel Co-Chair Heidi J. Larson, Professor of Anthropology, Risk, and Decision Science and Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project™ at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, will also join as discussants.

This will be the first in a series of conversations about building trust in Covid-19 vaccines in the United States. This project is supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.