When Vaccine Confidence Becomes National Security

With the mass rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, the United States has entered a new hopeful phase in the race to control the outbreak and get ahead of evolving variants. But public trust and confidence in vaccines, science, and public health authorities remain fragile, and as the pace of immunization begins to level off, the U.S. government and health sector share an imperative to improve access, address disparities at home and abroad, and provide reliable information to help individuals make informed choices about vaccines for themselves and their families. What is at stake is fundamentally a matter of national security: achieving sufficient immunity to restabilize public health, economic vitality, and society at large. In the race to mitigate transmission of the coronavirus, finding effective ways to build vaccine confidence has never been more important.

Please join the CSIS-LSHTM High-Level Panel on Vaccine Confidence and Misinformation on Monday, May 10, from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. EDT for the launch of its final report, Why Vaccine Confidence Matters to National Security. The session will begin with an overview of the Panel’s work by project director and senior fellow, Katherine E. Bliss, followed by remarks from Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on the importance of vaccine confidence to a strategy for mitigating the coronavirus pandemic. Dr. Schuchat and Dr. Bliss will then join a conversation with Margaret “Peggy” Hamburg, former Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Interim Vice President of Global Biological Policy and Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative; Heidi J. Larson, panel co-chair, professor of anthropology, risk, and decision science, and director of the Vaccine Confidence Project™ at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; James A. Lewis, senior vice president and director of the CSIS Strategic Technologies Program; and J. Stephen Morrison, panel co-chair, senior vice president, and director of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center.

The panel’s work is supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.