Spotlight on falling vaccination rates

As a consultant epidemiologist and Head of Immunisation for PHE, Dr Ramsay’s department is responsible for the national surveillance of vaccine-preventable diseases and for the national planning and implementation of all routine immunisation programmes in England.

Dr Ramsay acts as PHE medical advisor to the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and as Chief Editor of “Immunisation against Infectious Disease”. She also provides expert advice to a range of UK and international agencies on vaccination policy and is the PHE lead on the joint NIHR Health Protection Research Unit on Immunisation (with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine).

Dr Ramsay has also served on the Research Panel both Meningitis Research Foundation and Meningitis Now.

Dr Heidi J Larson is an anthropologist and Director of The Vaccine Confidence Project (VCP); Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, LSHTM; Associate Professor, Department of Global Health, University of Washington; and Chatham House Centre on Global Health Security Fellow. Dr Larson previously headed Global Immunisation Communication at UNICEF, chaired GAVI's Advocacy Task Force, and served on the WHO SAGE Working Group on vaccine hesitancy. The VCP is a WHO Centre of Excellence on addressing Vaccine Hesitancy.

Dr Larson's research focuses on the analysis of social and political factors that can affect the uptake of health interventions and influence policies. Her particular interest is on risk and rumour management from clinical trials to delivery – and building public trust. She served on the FDA Medical Countermeasure (MCM) Emergency Communication Expert Working Group and is Principle Investigator of the EU-funded (EBODAC) project on the deployment, acceptance and compliance of an Ebola vaccine trial in Sierra Leone.