Abstract
There are many reasons why people may feel hesitant to accept vaccines for their children, with fears about a link between vaccines and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) being one of the most common. In fact, parents of children with ASD are among those most likely to become vaccine hesitant. Vaccine-hesitant parents may delay and/or refuse one or more vaccines for their children, which subsequently places them at increased risk for contracting and spreading vaccine-preventable diseases. In this extension report, I briefly review two specific studies that followed our publication of “Beliefs About Autism and Vaccine Hesitancy Among Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder” (Goin-Kochel et al., 2020). The first extended our efforts to understand factors that predict vaccine hesitancy in a large sample of more than 8,800 families participating in the SPARK study (Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research for Knowledge). The second focused on a local sample of parents awaiting developmental/behavioral evaluation for their children to characterize beliefs about causes of children’s developmental delays and identify factors associated with vaccine hesitancy. Current approaches to successfully address vaccine hesitancy are limited, and novel strategies that resonate with targeted population segments are urgently needed.