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Overview

Pandemics and tropical infectious diseases are on the rise due to a confluence of climate change and urbanization, including areas of Texas and the Gulf Coast. Our Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development is developing new vaccines for the neglected and tropical diseases arising from these 21st Century forces including a new hookworm anemia showing high levels of protective immunity in a challenge infection model (CHIM) and a low-cost COVID-19 vaccine technology administered to more than 100 million people in low- and middle-income countries. But new vaccines alone won’t address the global declines in vaccine uptake arising from an antivaccine ecosystem that first accelerated in the U.S. more than 25 years ago and now globalizing. As both vaccine scientist and parent of adult daughter with autism and intellectual disabilities, Dr. Hotez has had a front row seat to the antivaccine movement and its evolution. An estimated 200,000 Americans died needlessly because they refused COVID immunizations in 2021-22 – they were victims of politically motivated antivaccine activism, now spilling over into childhood immunizations. Potential solutions are discussed.

Learning Objectives

  • Report on the rise of pandemic threats and tropical infections due to climate change, urbanization and deforestation
  • Summarize efforts at our Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development to develop new vaccines for neglected diseases in low- and middle-income countries
  • Summarize the origins of rising antivaccine sentiments and its recent shifts
  • Create awareness on approaches to countering antivaccine activities