Background
The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks vaccine hesitancy in the top-10 global threats to health. While the global spread of vaccine hesitancy is a complicated phenomenon, no method predicts which countries are most vulnerable to this hesitancy. Opinion dynamics models have great potential to recognise the countries where public opinion tends to be vulnerable or resistant. However, even though many successful models exist, only a few of them rely on empirical data. This project aimed at using agent-based models to explore the phenomenon of vaccine esitancy.
Results
Thanks to the results obtained from Mod2Data and from ResIN, we were able to analyze vaccine-related data in a novel way. This methodology showed how, in most countries, the “pro-vaxxers” were ideologically separated from the neutrals, therefore hindering their ability to influence them. Indeed, this separation between the pro-vaxxers and the neutrals proved to be a good predictor of both vaccine confidence and vaccination coverage in the following year.
Outputs
This project produced
- A publication in Nature’s Scientific Reports
- Multiple news articles (including the national news)