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# Vaccine Hesitancy Threatening Public Health: FDA
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/vaccine-hesitancy-threatening-public-health-fda/
- Published: 2024-01-05T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T14:19:43.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Biologics, #legacy-id-D5156088

Anti-vaxxers and those opting to shun vaccines over safety concerns or religious beliefs are threatening U.S. public health by risking “population immunity” against some vaccine-preventable infectious diseases. Writing in a 1/5 *JAMA* Viewpoint [online article](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2813910?guestAccessKey=387834a1-8e33-4b07-b37c-a1ac3144e023&utm%5Fsource=silverchair&utm%5Fmedium=email&utm%5Fcampaign=article%5Falert-jama&utm%5Fcontent=olf&utm%5Fterm=010524&adv=000000733514), FDA commissioner **Robert Califf** and CBER director **Peter Marks** sound the alarm that declining vaccination rates will likely lead to thousands of excess deaths this season from “illnesses amenable to prevention or reduction in severity of illness with vaccines.”

To offset the current trend, the FDA leaders “urge the clinical and biomedical community to redouble its efforts to provide accurate plain-language information regarding the individual and collective benefits and risks of vaccination. Such information is now needed because vaccines have been so successful in achieving their intended effects that many people no longer see the disturbing morbidity and mortality from infections amenable to vaccines. For example, smallpox has been eradicated, and polio has been eliminated from the US, through effective vaccination campaigns.

“Measles was similarly eliminated,” they continue, “but imported cases remain a threat to those who are unvaccinated as well as to those who are immunocompromised. Regrettably, pediatric vaccine hesitancy now has been responsible for several measles outbreaks in the US, including a recent one in central Ohio involving local acquired cases in 85 children, 36 of whom (42%) had to be hospitalized for complications. It is sobering to note that vaccine hesitancy to childhood vaccines, such as the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, has been found to cluster in middle-to high-income areas among parents with at least a college degree who preferred social media narratives over evidence-based vaccine information delivered by clinicians.”

Califf and Marks say that to start tipping the scales in the direction of evidence-informed vaccine acceptance to reduce deaths and illness from diseases in which vaccines are effective, clinicians need to step up their education of people they come into contact with because they are the most trusted source of information. “All those working in health care, while being straightforward about the risks, need to better educate people regarding the benefits of vaccination so that individuals can make well-informed choices based on accurate scientific evidence,” they write. “We believe that the best way to counter the current large volume of vaccine misinformation is to dilute it with large amounts of truthful, accessible scientific evidence.”