In episode 14, our host, Associate Professor Nigel Crawford, speaks to Dr Bruce Gellin. Bruce is the President of Global Immunization at the Sabin Vaccine Institute in Washington. The Sabin Vaccine Institute’s mission is to make vaccines more accessible, enable innovation and expand immunisation across the globe. Bruce took up this role in 2017, prior to this serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the National Vaccine Program Office at the US Department of Health and Human Services where he served as technical and policy advisor to the WHO, focusing on influenza vaccines and global issues of vaccine hesitancy. Bruce has also worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), consulted for GAVI and is one of America’s principle spokespeople on vaccines and immunisations. He and Nigel discuss the following in the context of vaccine confidence:

•The recent halting of the Oxford Astrazeneca trial and how the system that is in place did exactly what is supposed to
•“The Cutter Incident” and the ongoing impact this has had on vaccine safety, particularly from the manufacturing perspective
•The vast importance of ensuring immunisation providers understand the vaccine development process, as if they don’t understand it and are sceptical this can have a huge impact on vaccine uptake
•The importance of open disclosure in the vaccine development pathway
•How the Sabin Vaccine Institute is meeting the challenge of vaccine hesitancy
•Sabin’s ‘Boost’ program for healthcare workers
•How vaccines are monitored once they are in use, also called phase IV surveillance

Links:

The Sabin Vaccine Institute
https://www.sabin.org

The Conversation: Halting the Oxford vaccine trial doesn’t mean it’s not safe – it shows they’re following the right process
https://theconversation.com/halting-the-oxford-vaccine-trial-doesnt-mean-its-not-safe-it-shows-theyre-following-the-right-process-145837

The Cutter Incident by Paul Offit
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300126051/cutter-incident

Sabin Vaccine Institute: Immunization Advocates
https://www.immunizationadvocates.org

Sabin Vaccine Institute: Boost
https://boostcommunity.org/

The Lancet: Mapping global trends in vaccine confidence and investigating barriers to vaccine uptake: a large-scale retrospective temporal modelling study
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31558-0/fulltext

The Lancet: It is time to get serious about vaccine confidence
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31603-2/fulltext