IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsoctx/v13y2023i8p184-d1211350.html

Healthism vis-à-vis Vaccine Hesitancy: Insights from Parents Who Either Delay or Refuse Children’s Vaccination in Portugal

Author

Listed:
  • Joana Mendonça

    (Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Prof. Aníbal Bettencourt 9, 1600-189 Lisboa, Portugal)

  • Ana Patrícia Hilário

    (Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Prof. Aníbal Bettencourt 9, 1600-189 Lisboa, Portugal)

Abstract

Although healthism appears to be at the heart of the decision-making process of vaccine hesitancy, this matter has been understudied. We believe that the concept of healthism may be key to lessen the polarization of discourses around vaccination, offering a broad understanding of parents’ decision to not vaccinate their children. This article aims to deepen the knowledge on the relation between healthism and vaccine hesitancy, using Portugal as a case study. A qualitative research approach was adopted, and therefore, in-depth interviews were conducted with 31 vaccine-hesitant parents. The findings showed that vaccine-hesitant parents usually adopt several strategies based on natural living to prevent and tackle their children’s potential health issues. There appears to be a common approach towards health and life (i.e., healthism) among vaccine-hesitant parents. Drawing upon the healthism ideology, vaccine-hesitant parents make choices to ensure the good health of their child. These choices nevertheless represent a privileged position as the pursuit of healthfulness is constrained by sociodemographic aspects. Using vaccine hesitancy as the starting point, our findings show that healthism and its focus on personal accountability under the umbrella of neoliberalism may jeopardize global public health. Healthcare professionals should pay particular attention to healthism when addressing vaccine hesitancy in Portugal and elsewhere. Research evidence advocates the need to be sensitive to the broad spectrum of vaccine hesitancy as this encompasses multiple views on the subject.

Suggested Citation

  • Joana Mendonça & Ana Patrícia Hilário, 2023. "Healthism vis-à-vis Vaccine Hesitancy: Insights from Parents Who Either Delay or Refuse Children’s Vaccination in Portugal," Societies, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-15, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:13:y:2023:i:8:p:184-:d:1211350
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/13/8/184/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/13/8/184/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yaqub, Ohid & Castle-Clarke, Sophie & Sevdalis, Nick & Chataway, Joanna, 2014. "Attitudes to vaccination: A critical review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 1-11.
    2. Andrej Kirbiš, 2023. "The Impact of Socioeconomic Status, Perceived Threat and Healthism on Vaccine Hesitancy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-13, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dincer, Oguzhan & Gillanders, Robert, 2021. "Shelter in place? Depends on the place: Corruption and social distancing in American states," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 269(C).
    2. Kim, Soojong & Kim, Kwanho & Kim, Hye Min, 2025. "Large language models’ varying accuracy in recognizing risk-promoting and health-supporting sentiments in public health discourse: The cases of HPV vaccination and heated tobacco products," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 383(C).
    3. Helen Dickinson & Anne Kavanagh & Stefanie Dimov & Marissa Shields & Ashley McAllister, 2023. "Political legitimacy and vaccine hesitancy: Disability support workers in Australia," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 42(1), pages 104-116.
    4. Philipp Wassler & Giacomo Del Chiappa & Thi Hong Hai Nguyen & Giancarlo Fedeli & Nigel L. Williams, 2022. "Increasing vaccination intention in pandemic times: a social marketing perspective," Italian Journal of Marketing, Springer, vol. 2022(1), pages 37-58, March.
    5. Wang, Ruijie & Zhou, Yuhao & Medo, Matúš, 2025. "Combining deliberate study and heuristics to form opinions on interconnected questions," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 199(P1).
    6. Oguzhan C. Dincer, 2021. "Trust in Government and Compliance With Stay at Home Orders in American States," CESifo Working Paper Series 8869, CESifo.
    7. Berezin, Mabel & Eads, Alicia, 2016. "Risk is for the rich? Childhood vaccination resistance and a Culture of Health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 233-245.
    8. repec:beo:swcetp:23-03 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Ivana Unukić & Sofija Turjak & Juraj Rašić, 2023. "Attitudes Towards Science And Technology Among European Union Citizens," Shaping Post-COVID World – Challenges for Economic Theory and Policy, in: Aleksandra Praščević & Miomir Jakšić & Mihail Arandarenko & Dejan Trifunović & Milutin Ješić (ed.),Shaping Post-COVID World – Challenges for Economic Theory and Policy, chapter 3, pages 47-66, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Belgrade.
    10. Theiss Bendixen, 2020. "How cultural evolution can inform the science of science communication—and vice versa," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-10, December.
    11. Macdonald, Bobbie & Vivalt, Eva, 2017. "Effective strategies for overcoming the naturalistic heuristic: Experimental evidence on consumer acceptance of “clean” meat," OSF Preprints ndtr2, Center for Open Science.
    12. repec:osf:osfxxx:ndtr2_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Andrej Kirbiš, 2023. "The Impact of Socioeconomic Status, Perceived Threat and Healthism on Vaccine Hesitancy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-13, March.
    14. Željko Pavić & Emma KovaÄ ević & Adrijana Å uljok & Juraj Jurlina & Maja MiÅ¡kulin & Aida Mujkić & Ivan MiÅ¡kulin, 2023. "The Deficit and Contextual Models of Vaccine Hesitancy: A Test of the Mediation Paths," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, December.
    15. Benjamin Miranda Tabak & Matheus B. Froner & Rafael Corrêa & Thiago C. Silva, 2023. "The Intersection of Health Literacy and Public Health: A Machine Learning-Enhanced Bibliometric Investigation," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(20), pages 1-18, October.
    16. Hao Gao & Qingting Zhao & Chuanlin Ning & Difan Guo & Jing Wu & Lina Li, 2021. "Does the COVID-19 Vaccine Still Work That “Most of the Confirmed Cases Had Been Vaccinated”? A Content Analysis of Vaccine Effectiveness Discussion on Sina Weibo during the Outbreak of COVID-19 in Nanjing," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-14, December.
    17. Athias, Laure & Macina, Moudo, 2022. "Demand for vaccination in Sub-Saharan Africa: The vertical legacy of the slave trade," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 293(C).
    18. Auste Valinciute & Mike S. Schäfer, 0. "Lithuanians’ perceptions of vaccination and their sources of information: a literature review," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 0, pages 1-11.
    19. Christophe Lévêque & Haris Megzari, 2023. "Intensification or diversification: responses by anti health-pass entrepreneurs to French government announcements," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 553-583, December.
    20. Lucy Lockwood & Xiangqun Ju & Sneha Sethi & Joanne Hedges & Lisa Jamieson, 2024. "Knowledge and Awareness of HPV, the HPV Vaccine and Cancer-Related HPV Types among Indigenous Australians," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 21(3), pages 1-14, March.
    21. Vincenzo Carrieri & Raffele Lagravinese & Giuliano Resce, 2021. "Predicting vaccine hesitancy from area‐level indicators: A machine learning approach," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(12), pages 3248-3256, December.
    22. Barceló, Joan & Sheen, Greg Chih-Hsin & Tung, Hans H. & Wu, Wen-Chin, 2022. "Vaccine nationalism among the public: A cross-country experimental evidence of own-country bias towards COVID-19 vaccination," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 310(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:13:y:2023:i:8:p:184-:d:1211350. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask MDPI Indexing Manager to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.