University of Lausanne Reports Findings in Immunization (Demand for vaccination in Sub-Saharan Africa: The vertical legacy of the slave trade): Public Health – Immunization

2022 JAN 04 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- New research on Public Health - Immunization is the subject of a report. According to news originating from Lausanne, Switzerland, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “We combine historical data on the slave trade by ethnic group with individual-level data geolocated at the cluster level from the 2010-2014 Demographic and Health Surveys to examine the relationship between ancestors’ exposure to the slave trade and children vaccination status against measles. Exploiting within-location variation, and hence isolating the vertical cultural transmission channel of the slave trade, we find that children from mothers whose ancestors were exposed to the slave trade are less likely to be vaccinated than children living in the same location but with mothers from a slave-free ethnic group.”

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the University of Lausanne, “The effect is larger than that of standard determinants of health demand, such as education or revenue. Exploiting other health behaviors, we point to mistrust as the channel through which the slave trade affects current demand for vaccination. We find evidence of increased adverse effect of slave trade exposure on contemporaneous demand for vaccination among the descendants whose family has a higher preference for traditional practices and higher incentives to transmit their inherited cultural traits.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “While we know that there is not a uniform health policy code deemed appropriate for all geographical areas, our results suggest that there is space to integrate ethnic groups’ historical-specificity in health policy design and communication.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Demand for vaccination in Sub-Saharan Africa: The vertical legacy of the slave trade. Social Science & Medicine, 2021;293:114640. Social Science & Medicine can be contacted at: Pergamon-elsevier Science Ltd, The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, England. (Elsevier - www.elsevier.com; Social Science & Medicine - http://www.journals.elsevier.com/social-science-and-medicine/)

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from Laure Athias, University of Lausanne, Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration, Quartier Until-Mouline, CH-1015, Lausanne, Switzerland.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114640. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

The publisher’s contact information for the journal Social Science & Medicine is: Pergamon-elsevier Science Ltd, The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, England.

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