The Long-Covid of Pharma Marketing - Part 5
Vaccines: Public Health or Personal Choice?
In our final installation of The Long-Covid of Pharma Marketing series, we deep dive into the shifting attitudes towards vaccines across the board. The pandemic may have faded from headlines, but its aftershocks continue to ripple through one of healthcare’s most crucial pillars: vaccination.
What was widely accepted as a matter of public health has now become, for many, a deeply personal – and increasingly political – choice. Across the United States, support for childhood vaccine mandates has declined, parental skepticism is growing, and attitudes are fracturing along political and religious lines.
This shifting landscape reveals more than changing numbers; it exposes a profound tension between individual choice and collective responsibility. As concerns about COVID-19 wane for some and harden for others, the lasting effects of the 2020 pandemic are clear: it leaves a landscape where health decisions are increasingly entangled with ideology, identity, and mistrust.
Shifting Attitudes: When Vaccines Become Political
In 2023, we explored the debate between personal choice and social responsibility in healthcare, noting that 77% of vaccinated adults agreed that those refusing COVID-19 vaccines were hurting the country (1). Now in 2024, concerns about the virus as a public health threat have decreased across the political spectrum, with a gap between Democrats and Republicans shrinking to just 16%, down from 37% in 2022 (2). Despite this, 40% of Americans remain somewhat or very concerned about unknowingly spreading COVID-19, though only 28% have received the updated vaccine. The report reflects a resistant undercurrent of COVID-19 concerns.
Meanwhile, since 2020, we have seen a rise in negative attitudes toward childhood vaccinations, with growing parental skepticism about their necessity (3). While 70% of Americans still agree that healthy children should be required to be vaccinated in public schools, this is a drop from 82% in 2019. Notably, Republican support for vaccine mandates in schools has fallen sharply, from 79% between 2016 and 2019 to just 57% in 2023, while Democrat support remains steady – demonstrating the growing political tension in public health opinions. More concerning, 40% of parents now believe they should be able to opt out of vaccinating their children, even if it poses health risks to others. In particular, support for vaccine requirements among white evangelicals plummeted from 77% in 2019 to just 20% in 2023.
Implications for Healthcare Marketing
For pharma marketers, this is uncharted territory. Rebuilding trust in vaccines is no longer about presenting the facts alone but about understanding the beliefs, fears, and cultural pressures that shape them.
This signals the need to promote vaccination through a “dyadic” approach, targeting parent vaccination as it directly influences child vaccination (4). Understanding the principles held by different religious groups, political affiliations, and parental concerns is key to fostering trust and encouraging social responsibility in communities.
Where Do We Go from Here?
As this series has shown, the pandemic did more than disrupt healthcare, it exposed the deep, often invisible threads that shape how people access care, trust medicine, and make health decisions. Healthcare marketers must remember people navigate these choices as best as they can, amidst their circumstances, fears, culture, community, and their faith.
If pharma marketing is to rebuild trust and relevance in this changed world, it must begin with empathy: seeing people not as data points, but as individuals whose lives extend beyond their illness and health concerns alone. Socioeconomic pressures, racial and cultural identity, political tensions, and personal histories all influence how messages are received – and whether they are believed.
To truly make an impact, marketers must listen first, seek to understand the full dimensions of people’s lives, and create communication that reflects the reality of those they serve. Only then can we move from just marketing campaigns to connections that truly heal.
(4) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35697575/