Vaccine Hesitancy and Child Immunizations: Rationales, Issues and Knowledge Gaps

Dear Colleagues,

Globally, infant and childhood vaccine coverage rates are still not high enough, with outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases occurring frequently even in high-income countries. Vaccine hesitancy is one of the factors explaining suboptimal percentages of vaccination coverage, defined by the SAGE group as a “delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite availability of vaccine services”. The decision not to vaccinate or delay vaccine shots comes from a complex decision-making process influenced by numerous factors related to population, context, environment, historical period and single vaccine.
This recent-years worldwide increase in vaccine hesitancy has lead the World Health Organization to list vaccine hesitancy as one of its top 10 health threats facing the world in 2019. This has led several high-, middle- and low income countries to enact, strengthen or contemplate mandatory and/or recommended infant and childhood immunization in order to address this novel gap.
This Special Issue focuses on the knowledge and strategies to reduce vaccine hesitancy and improve vaccination coverage rates in the group of infant and childhood. Submission of original articles, systematic reviews, short communications, and other types of article on related topics are welcome. Manuscripts will follow standard Journal peer-review practices, and those accepted for publication will appear in the special issue on Vaccine Hesitancy and Child Immunizations: Rationales, Issues and Knowledge Gaps.

Prof. Davide Gori
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Vaccines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.