COVID-19 Vaccine: Promoting Vaccine Acceptance

While many questions remain about COVID-19 vaccine, there has been great progress since mid-October 2020, when Annals of Internal Medicine and the American College of Physicians (ACP) hosted our first forum about COVID-19 vaccine (1). As we hosted our second forum on 16 December 2020, Americans and others around the globe were beginning to be vaccinated to protect them from COVID-19. Now comes the hard work of making sure sufficient numbers of people are vaccinated to end this pandemic. The vaccine does no good if it remains in freezers and vials—we need to get the vaccine into people.

Internists and other clinicians must be prepared to participate in this effort. To help prepare them, Annals and ACP gathered 4 experts for a discussion of strategies to promote acceptance of vaccine—Dr. Ada Adimora from the University of North Carolina, Dr. Helene D. Gayle from the Chicago Community Trust, Dr. Peter J. Hotez from Baylor University, and Dr. Heidi J. Larson from the London School of Tropical Medicine. Dr. Ryan D. Mire, ACP Regent, and Dr. William Schaffner from Vanderbilt University moderated the discussion. Readers can view the program in the video that accompanies this article. Attendees submitted hundreds of questions ahead of time. While it was infeasible to answers all of these questions during this program, the panelists addressed many issues that appear to be on clinicians' minds.