Chester County public health officials did not wait long to launch a response to the growing measles outbreak in their community, which shares a border with Lancaster County, the epicentre of the outbreak.
Jeanne Franklin, the director of the health department, said officials have been using some of the strategies they employed during the Covid pandemic – knocking on doors in the community to let them know about the outbreak and offering private settings, like people’s homes, for immunisations.
Since the outbreak started, the county has given 538 MMR vaccines, 340 of which they administered in private settings.
“People have called up and said, ‘I can’t get to your clinic, or, I don’t want people to know I’ve changed my mind,” Franklin said. “‘If you can come to us, that’s a lot easier.'”
The boots-on-the-ground approach has helped the health department dispel misinformation and build trust with the community, local health officials said.
In recent years, childhood vaccination rates have fallen across the country as false theories about the safety of the measles vaccine have proliferated on social media.
Those theories have found roots even in an insulated community with limited access to computers, Weiser said. She has heard people ask if there are heavy metals in the vaccine that could make them magnetic, or if the shot has a computer chip in it.
“You’re clearly getting information from that hard-core group that is promoting that misinformation and disinformation,” she said.
People in this “hard-core group”, who are staunchly against vaccines, are unlikely to be swayed, experts and officials themselves said.
But now, local health officials said, many affected by the Pennsylvania outbreak are seeing their neighbours fall seriously ill and asking thoughtful questions. Weiser said many are parents who are unfamiliar with the shots and are scared to make the wrong choice for their children.
“There is the classically-defined anti-vaxer, versus people who are unaware or their culture feels differently,” Franklin said. “The thinking and the willingness to discuss and possibly change your mind is different between those two bookends.”
