Skip to content
Connect
Stories

Kids’ COVID-19 vaccines are available. So why are parents’ concerns still so high?

People in this story

(Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via AP)
A nurse administers a shot of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to Daniel Castaneda, 12, at a mobile vaccination site at Oak Ridge High School on May 22, 2021 in Orlando, Florida.

The conventional wisdom among pandemic researchers was that vaccine-hesitant parents would come around once federal authorities green-lit COVID-19 shots for children. But, as a new study shows, that hasn’t happened. Parents actually have even more concerns about vaccines, catching researchers by surprise.

Parents registered high levels of worry across the board, with more than half of them expressing misgivings about how new the vaccine is, whether it has been tested enough, whether it even works, and side effects, according to findings from the Covid States Project, a collaborative effort by researchers from Northeastern, Harvard, Northwestern, and Rutgers.

“My intuition would not have been that FDA [Food and Drug Administration] OK comes and concerns go up,” says David Lazer, university distinguished professor of political science and computer sciences at Northeastern, and one of the study’s authors. “I am surprised at some of the very substantial shifts against the vaccine among parents.”

Continue reading at News@Northeastern.

More Stories

Alessandro Vespignani working at his desk

Northeastern receives $17.5 million from CDC to launch infectious disease prediction center

09.19.2023
US citizens Siamak Namazi (C-with glasses) and Morad Tahbaz are greeted upon their arrival at the Doha International Airport in Doha on September 18, 2023.

Ransom payment or effective negotiating? How the US freed five captive Americans in Iran

09.19.2023
Selenis Leyva attends the 'Orange Is The New Black' Final Season Premiere in New York.

Stand-up comedy and academic research converge in new speaker series ‘Latinxs and Comedy’

09.20.23
Featured Events