Vaccine Hesitancy Often is Synonymous with Vaccine Confusion: Perspectives from Primary Care

Speed of development of the COVID-19 vaccines is a leading concern as is the fear of vaccine-related infertility in the ethnically and racially diverse community where Dr Jorge Moreno practices primary care. The other major issue he encounters in conversations with patients hesitant to take the vaccine is trust -- of the vaccine development process overall but also of any of the information they hear and read.

Moreno is an assistant professor of medicine at Yale Medical School and a primary care physician at Yale Internal Medicine, a large multiphysician practice in New Haven County in Connecticut, where his patient panel is 20% to 39% Hispanic and African American.

In a recent interview, he told Patient Care^® Online that the myths and fears he has addressed about vaccination tend to change based on what patients are being exposed to online. His approach is to present precisely what the medical community knows about the virus and the vaccines in language patients can understand and to use stories or anecdotes, if possible, to illustrate. The more closely linked to everyday life the conversation is, he suggests, the more likely it is to make a difference.