Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy Among Immigrant Communities in Canada

Abstract

The digital communication era has given rise to quick and convenient access to information. With vaccine disinformation and anti-vaccine rhetoric becoming increasingly prevalent across social media, the need to improve vaccine literacy at a population level has become urgent. Immigrant communities face unique challenges that hinder their access to credible and coherent sources of vaccine-related information, potentially leading to reliance on disinformative sources of information. Additionally, factors such as language barriers, social exclusions, and the amplification of anti-vaccine narratives across social media culminate the perfect milieu for vaccine hesitant attitudes to propagate within immigrant communities. By identifying the determinants behind the adoption of anti-vaccine narratives among immigrant communities in Canada, strategies to counter vaccine hesitancy can be optimized to improve health education and vaccine literacy within immigrant communities.