Vaccines

Declining childhood vaccination: An interview with Michigan's top doctor

Declining childhood vaccination: An interview with Michigan's top doctor

Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Chief Medical Executive for the State of Michigan, discusses challenges related to childhood vaccinations post-COVID, emphasizing the need to rebuild trust and explore innovative solutions in a compelling interview with Michigan Public Health professor Matthew L. Boulton.

A data driven fairytale

Bhramar Mukherjee: A data-driven fairytale

Professor Bhramar Mukherjee explains how biostatistics helps make sense of big data for medical prevention and treatment and how she encourages her students to stay patient, optimistic, and attuned to their inner voices in their pursuits.

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(Re)emerging infectious diseases

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many people didn’t spend as much time thinking about a news report about an emerging or reemerging disease popping up in another part of the world—or even in our own country. But now, that news feels different, more consequential. In this new era, where global media attention has turned to epidemiology and infectious disease, how do we understand our situation and feel protected when it seems like we’re hearing about so many diseases all the time?

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Difficult Conversations: Using Motivational Interviewing to Convince People to Get Vaccinated

Generally speaking, giving unsolicited advice to people only tends to annoy them and make them less likely to change any of their behaviors. Real change tends to come when someone sees a discrepancy between their own behavior and what they value as a person. So, how do you talk to a coworker, friend, or family member who is firmly entrenched in anti-vaccine beliefs? Preaching to them that COVID vaccines are safe and effective will most likely fail. But there are some lessons to be gleaned from a counseling style called motivational interviewing, where instead of trying to persuade someone, you subtly reflect back to them their own thoughts and feelings. In other words, you allow the other person to drive the conversation, with the idea that they themselves will see discrepancies between their actions and their beliefs. University of Michigan School of Public Health Professor Ken Resnicow has studied and used motivational interviewing since the early 1990s and has some timely tips for how to engage in these difficult conversations.