Conversations with Vaccine-Critical Parents

In 2015 and 2016, Kaisu conducted open-ended interviews with nine vaccine-critical parents in the Netherlands and Finland to explore health beliefs that shape the parents' immunisation decisions. The health beliefs were interpreted in diagrammatic visualisations, and paralleled with scientific views by discussing them with Johan. By gaining an understanding of the parents' beliefs and behaviours, visiting their homes and meeting their children, and mirroring these experiences with her existing reservations about vaccines, Kaisu represented the parents' voices during a collaborative dialogue with Johan. To introduce the insights gained in this dialogue, this article [PDF] employs a form of a critical conversation to expose parts of the interdisciplinary dialogue in which these insights emerged. In short, the artist and scientist collaborators represented a simulated vaccine-hesitant individual and vaccine expert, enabling them to practice and reflect on their communication with each other. Johan's self-disclosure of the lifestyle choices that Kaisu had previously associated with vaccine-hesitant parents helped shift the stereotypical image she had of scientists.

As that simulated dialogue (captured through excerpts in the article) shows, in this project, the collaborators' self-disclosure was a significant factor in gaining trust and respect regardless of the differences in their opinions. Self-disclosure is not considered a technique; it is an inherent part of the collaborative creative process in (performative) arts and arts-based research. Because this project aimed to explore vaccine hesitancy through the arts, it was essential that the participants share their personal stories and emotions; these would also be a central part of the artwork that was created. Mutual trust and the shift in Kaisu's perceptions of stereotypes about scientists were partly due to Johan sharing his own life-style choices and beliefs, personal traits the majority of his peers likely do not possess.

One of the products of the collaboration is a 17-minute documentary about vaccine-critical parents' health beliefs, such as their understanding of the immune system and importance of illness in a child's development. These perceptions of health have been interpreted and translated in arts-based diagrams and discussed with a vaccine researcher. Click here to watch a short preview of the film.

Immunisation and Vaccines.

Koski and Holst explain that research on vaccine hesitancy typically generates the assumption that researchers are in favour of all vaccines, thus excluding collaborators with varying degrees of vaccine hesitancy. However, there are reasons to suggest that, in addition to focusing on specific groups of parents, interdisciplinary research groups could investigate multiple voices within and purposefully invite vaccine-hesitant researchers to collaborate. They explored this concept in the above-described project.

In terms of establishing mutual trust, art-science projects face multiple challenges, according to Koski and Holst. While the public, including Kaisu, often questions the integrity of pharmaceutical professionals, many of these professionals also have doubts about arts-based initiatives.

For more information, see:

• Kaisu Koski's website
• Exploring Vaccine Hesitancy Through an Artist-Scientist Collaboration: Visualizing Vaccine-Critical Parents' Health Beliefs, by Kaisu Koski and Johan Holst J, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 14(3), 2017, pp. 411-426.