As part of the Public Health curriculum at the Medical University of Vienna, Anna Pichelstorfer and Nora Hansl were invited to present the VALUE-VACC project. In their seminar ‘The societal significance of vaccination and the importance of vaccination communication’, they gave an overview of social science research on vaccination, relevant methods for studying vaccine uptake, and related policy questions in Austria. In the practical part of the seminar, medical students had the opportunity to test communication tools in concrete empirical scenarios. Nora’s and Anna’s experiences and science communication skills made for a great combination!

After wrapping up her political science degree in the summer, Paula-Marie Pucker left our team and now fully concentrates on her journalistic work. She was a student assistant for VALUE-VACC from July 2023 to September 2024 and took care of finances and administrative tasks of the research group. On top of that, she participated in the team’s research activities helping with literature research and engaging in data analysis.

Paula, we are very sad to see you leave our team, but we are equally happy to be able to read, listen, and watch your future work in the media. We wish you all the best and hope you have a great start!

The VALUE VACC-Team has published a new article in “Social Science & Medicine”.

“I can’t see the forest for the ticks, uhm, trees …”: The role of online forums in parents’ vaccination trajectories

Abstract: When it comes to health-related information-seeking behavior, online communities play a key role for some groups, such as parents. With a case study of online communities in a loosely organized vaccination system, that of Austria, we study how parents make use of a prominent online forum (parents.at) in their vaccination trajectories and situate this analysis in its socio-political context. Based on inductive qualitative analysis of relevant threads (n = 27), we find that parents use forums in three ways: First, the forum serves as a platform through which parents seek orientation in a loosely organized and fragmented vaccination system. Second, the forum offers space for sharing, collecting, and evaluating different forms of expertise. In doing so, parents carve out a space in which they can comfortably put lay expertise and credentialed expertise on a par, particularly in their advice to peers. Third, and on that basis, parents use the forum for deliberating on future or past vaccination-related decisions. In doing so, they frequently draw on idiosyncratic notions of individual risks and benefits. These three practices enable parents to accumulate and share what we label navigational capital. We conclude that parents resort to online spaces both out of a subjective need and, for some, as a result of a dysfunction of the national childhood vaccination program which offers little orientation for parents.

To the publication: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117183

Focusing on the question “Warum Impfen?/ Why vaccinate?” our team started numerous conversations about experiences on vaccination during the science communication event “Lange Nacht der Forschung”. Several hundred people were interested in our research. Thank you to everyone who joined us! We had a great time and are looking forward to next year’s LNF!

VALUE VACC will take part in this year’s “Lange Nacht der Forschung”. This science communication event takes place all over Austria. We will present our project in the Main Ceremonial Hall of University of Vienna (Universitätsring 1, 1010 Vienna). We do not offer vaccines, but chats about our research, fun games, and opportunities for participating in our research.

Further information: https://langenachtderforschung.at/station/3469

VALUE-VACC is now in in its second year – and we are currently a team of six!

In February, we took some time to reflect on our progress and ongoing research. For the multidisciplinary VALUE-VACC team, regular review meetings where we can exchange ideas, results and future collaborations are essential. The highlight of our first day was the release of our very own VALUE-VACC merch: a branded mug!

On the second day of our retreat, we focused on dissemination, collaborations and future paper projects. It was all about making commitments and brainstorming in which directions VALUE-VACC will develop.

We do not yet want to reveal too much but watch this space for news, events, and upcoming publications!

Katharina T. Paul and Nora Hansl were interviewed for one of the most read daily newspapers in Austria, Der Standard. The article written by Pia Kruckenhauser covers the current measles outbreak in Austria, and tries to unfold why parents decide to not vaccinate their children. As Paul and Hansl emphasize in the article the reason for not vaccinating one’s child is not only influenced by vaccine skepticism. But the structure of the public health system has a direct effect on it as well.

Link to the article: https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000208158/die-masernimpfung-wirkt-und-ist-sicher-warum-zoegern-eltern-trotzdem

At the beginning of November, we were delighted to welcome Dr Ellen Stewart from the University of Strathclyde at our department. Her stay was organized by VALUE VACC and CeSCoS (Center for the Study of Contemporary Solidarity).

During her stay, Dr Stewart gave an IPW lecture on her newest book “How Britain Loves the NHS” (Stewart, 2023). Colleagues from the department, students and other researchers came to listen to her interesting insights into the NHS and the “healthcare discrepancy”. She also held a Master Class with five early career researchers from various departments. Dr Stewart’s expertise in public health, and qualitative and participatory methods was widely appreciated. It was a pleasure for the whole VALUE VACC-Team, and we hope to welcome her again!

On September 7th, 2023, Anna Pichelstorfer successfully defended her PhD Thesis in Science and Technology Studies, entitled “(Re)Producing public issues: the co-production of assisted reproduction and democracy in Austria”. In her thesis, supervised by Prof. Ulrike Felt, she analyzed different practices of problematizing assisted reproductive technologies to show how those problematizations did not only define technologies in distinct ways but also enacted specific situated imaginaries and practices of doing democracy. It was a wonderful and joyful moment with colleagues, friends and family present! Anna can now officially start her role as a postdoc in the project VALUE-VACC.

Co-director of Centre for Health Policy, University of Strathclyde

On November 6, Dr Ellen Stewart is going to visit the Department of Political Science. She will give an invited lecture in the lecture series of the Department of Political Science (IPW lectures). The lecture is organized by the research group VALUE-VACC  (FWF – Austrian Science Fund START project, headed by Katharina T. Paul) in cooperation with CeSCoS (Centre for the Study of Contemporary Solidarity).

Topic: How Britain loves the NHS: solidarity and ‘the healthcare discrepancy’

Date: November 6, 17:00

Location: Conference Room (Neues Institutsgebäude, Universitätsstr. 7, 2nd floor, Trakt A, University of Vienna, Department of Political Science)

Quantitative studies of public opinion have argued that there is a ‘healthcare discrepancy’ (Bambra, 2005) in public attitudes to welfare state spending: population attitudes towards spending on healthcare diverge from those towards other welfare state functions. This is attributed to factors including the socio-cultural status of medicine in societies, and to the less stigmatised character of ill-health compared to conditions such as poverty or unemployment. In How Britain Loves the NHS (Stewart, 2023) I offer an analysis of this phenomenon in the UK context, where the socio-cultural significance of the NHS has grown sharply in recent years. This is often seen as problematic because the NHS becomes a proxy for exclusionary nationalist sentiment (Fitzgerald, Hinterberger, Narayan, & Williams, 2020), but also because public support for the NHS might encourage politicians to protect NHS budgets at the expense of other public services which might prevent ill-health. This paper discusses not how much the British public loves the NHS, but the modalities and dimensions of that affection. I consider how public affection for the NHS might be conceptualised, not as a vampiric threat to the wider welfare state, but as a valuable exemplar of how public services might act as solidarity-generating machines within society.