Prof. Heidi J. Larson is Director of The Vaccine Confidence Project and Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; Clinical Professor, Department of Health Metrics Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle; Guest Professor at the Centre for Evaluation of Vaccination, University of Antwerp and at KULeuven, Belgium.
Keynote lecture title ”Building Societal Cooperation and Cohesion: The next Big Global Health Challenge”
Her research focuses on the analysis of social and political factors that can affect uptake of health interventions with a particular interest in understanding and managing risk and rumors from clinical trials to delivery – and building public trust.
Prof. Larson previously headed Global Immunization Communication at UNICEF, chaired Gavi’s Advocacy Task Force, and served on the WHO SAGE Working Group on vaccine hesitancy.
She is author of STUCK: How Vaccine Rumors Start – and Why They Don’t Go Away (Oxford University Press, 2020) and has published widely on the drivers and enablers of vaccine confidence. In 2021, she was awarded the Edinburgh Medal, in recognition of the role she has played in recognising the importance of popular and widespread misunderstandings of vaccines.
Website: www.vaccineconfidence.org
Twitter: @ProfHeidiLarson
