Abstract
Because they affect the entire population, vaccination policies are an ideal place to observe contemporary health inequalities. In this presentation, we will return to the social mechanisms explaining these inequalities, but we will also look at the paradoxes revealed by the study of vaccination today. Indeed, the multiplication and politicization of debates on vaccination complicates the relationship usually observed between social resources and the adoption of good health practices. Non-vaccination may reflect a lack of resources limiting access to the healthcare system, but it may also reflect the opposite: the ability to find competing sources of information and the confidence to question medical authority. Vaccination also highlights the complexity of healthcare decision-making processes, and in particular the gap that can exist between what people think and what they do, as well as the prevalence of indecision in these processes. Using questionnaire surveys on a wide range of vaccines, and looking back at ethnographies of vaccine resistance, we propose to explore the ways in which social inequalities weigh on healthcare decision-making processes in a context where medical knowledge is contested.
Jérémy Ward
Jérémy Ward is a sociologist and research fellow at Inserm (Cermes3, Villejuif). Since 2020, he has been an expert member of the Commission Technique des Vaccinations at the Haute Autorité de la Santé. Since 2023, he has coordinated the SHS-Vaccination-France network with Patrick Peretti-Watel and Pierre Verger. His work deals with the emergence of public debates and ordinary relationships to science on medical topics. His approach lies at the intersection of political sociology, the sociology of science and the sociology of cognition and representations. He has worked mainly on vaccination in France, and on a variety of other subjects such as the prescription of hydroxychloroquine, or ordinary relations to clinical trials and conflicts of interest.
