Abram L. Wagner

Dr. Wagner studies the predictors of vaccine-preventable disease incidence, with a particular focus on vaccine hesitancy, at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. It has been said that we are living in the “platinum age of vaccinology,” as advances in genetic engineering and immunology have expanded the scope of vaccine development to prevent a greater array of diseases than previously thought possible. Since 2000, the US has licensed ten new vaccines and, at the same time, has seen the unfortunate emergence of widespread vaccine hesitancy leading to outbreaks of measles and pertussis. Vaccine hesitancy has primarily been studied in high-income countries and is poorly researched in settings like China, even though we are living in a globalized age where both news and infections have the potential to rapidly spread around the world. Dr. Wagner’s research is targeted towards evidence-based programs and policies that work toward the control of a broad range of vaccine-preventable diseases. The long-term goals of Dr. Wagner’s research agenda are to characterize the pathways between public health messaging and the incidence of vaccine-preventable diseases. This research will ask questions such as: how can public health messaging impact vaccine hesitancy and, in turn, vaccination uptake (including dimensions such as the timing and scheduling of various vaccines)? And then how does the scheduling of vaccination within a population affect the incidence of both vaccine-preventable diseases and all-cause infectious disease morbidity within the community?