How vaccine skeptics use storytelling effectively to create powerful but medically inaccurate messaging

Medical humanities researcher Katherine Shwetz, writing in The Conversation, explains that vaccine hesitancy persists not because people lack information, but because vaccine-skeptical groups excel at storytelling. These movements have flourished for over two hundred years — from nineteenth-century riots against mandatory smallpox vaccination in England to today — and their power stems from detaching vaccines from medicine and reframing them as symbols of personal freedom and resistance to government overreach. While public health messaging must stick to complex, often unremarkable scientific reality, vaccine-hesitant narratives can be emotionally dynamic, featuring doctors who ignore patient concerns and children developing health problems after vaccination. The deeper challenge: hesitancy stems from institutional distrust, desire for social belonging, and deeply held beliefs — not simply lack of knowledge. Under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has begun adopting similar narrative strategies, framing vaccine decisions in terms of autonomy versus public health. Shwetz suggests that engaging with these storytelling techniques and acknowledging legitimate critiques — particularly from marginalized communities with documented reasons to distrust the medical establishment — may open a path toward more respectful healthcare conversations.

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