The role of complementary and alternative medicine practitioners in the information‐seeking pathway of vaccine‐hesitant parents in the Blue Mountains area, Australia

Abstract

While immunisation rates were 94.63% for the whole Nepean Blue Mountains region of New South Wales in 2017, coverage for 1 year olds in the upper Blue Mountains was under 80%. There is a known relationship between vaccine-hesitant parents and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use; however, little is known about how CAM practitioners fit within the information-seeking pathway of parents. This exploratory study sought to address this knowledge gap. Qualitative semi-structured interviews with vaccine-hesitant and vaccine rejecting parents and CAM practitioners purposively sampled from the Blue Mountains area revealed three sets of themes: 1) Parents' search for further information about immunisation; 2) Parents' use of CAM practitioners as an immunisation information source; and 3) CAM practitioners' engagement with parents about immunisation. CAM practitioners form a definite, if complex, part of vaccinehesitant and vaccine-rejecting parents decision-making pathway in the Blue Mountains area. The notion of patient choice is crucial to vaccine discussions. Development of support materials, such as decision resources which give impartial and detailed information while acknowledging and supporting patient choice, are needed to support both CAM practitioners and parents in making informed vaccination decisions.

Agency and liminality during the COVID-19 pandemic: Why information literacy cannot fix vaccine hesitancy

“…Demonstrating how bodies become the centre of safeguarding practice [ 71 ], these comments, which echo arguments that complementary and alternative medicine advocates make about the primacy of the corporeal [ 25 ], further highlight how vaccine hesitancy is shaped in relation to a reading of shared sensory encounters.…”

“…The body is further referenced through the links that vaccine-hesitant parents make between salutogenic practices, including eating organic food, and the need for vaccines [ 23 , 24 , p. 1121]. These ideas mirror studies into the trust that is placed in bodily focused complementary and alternative medicine practitioners [ 25 ]. One final interesting allusion to the importance of bodily information is parental instinct, which is also referred to as ‘Mother knows best’ [ 26 , p. 868].…”

“…Tainted by the mishandling of other health and social crises [ 31 , p. 1066], governments are also regularly accused of acting in collusion with pharmaceutical companies [ 28 , p. 224, 30 , p. 18, 31 , p. 1066]. These fears, which centre on the perception that governments are withholding vaccination information, play out through increased cross-checking of official information sources [ 17 , p. 46, 22 , p. 1199, 25 , p. 4]. Interestingly, given the moral panic about the impact of media messaging on vaccine hesitancy, studies also report increased cross-checking of media and Internet sources due to the scepticism that is frequently accorded these sources of information [ 22 , p. 1199, 28 , p. 224, 32 , p. 1770, 34 , p. 7, 35 , p. 150].…”

Demographic and psychometric predictors associated with engagement in risk-associated alternative healthcare behaviours

“…Although rarer, some of these, such as naturopathic intravenous therapy, are of particularly higher risk [2,[86][87][88][89]. The use of naturopathic alternatives to vaccines also poses significant risks to the community, including increased vaccination hesitancy and reduced protection against serious contagions [90][91][92].…”

Heritage and hesitancy: how preference for traditional Chinese medicine influences vaccine attitudes

“…Investigations into this correlation have provided valuable insights, offering a promising pathway to comprehend the multifaceted determinants of vaccine attitudes and choices. Empirical studies have unveiled diverse and intricate patterns, indicating the complexity of the association between CAM use and vaccine hesitancy ( 19 , 22 , 23 ). These complexities arise from several factors, including the specific practices of CAM examined in empirical studies and variations in vaccine categories.…”