Listen: Empathy should be the first response to people with vaccine injury, fears

For scientists and medical professionals well versed in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, it is often too easy to write off the concerns of people who fear them, or feel they have been injured by them. But vaccine expert Kizzmekia S. Corbett-Helaire argues that professionals should be more empathetic when it comes to listening to these concerns, and that understanding them may help developers make better vaccines.

Corbett-Helaire, an assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston and a Freeman Hrabowski Scholar at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, joins “The First Opinion Podcast” this week to discuss her experience helping roll out the first Covid-19 vaccines in the midst of the pandemic. She also addresses her desire to close the gap between public health experts trying to end disease and people who genuinely fear harm from vaccines.

Experts must listen carefully and respond with empathy. “Vaccine development goes beyond the clinic and it goes toward trust and actually getting people taking these very lifesaving vaccines,” she said.

You can read more of Corbett-Helaire’s thoughts in her first opinion essay “Empathy should guide responses to reported vaccine injuries.”

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