Vaccines Are the Most Impactful Innovation in Health Equity
April 15, 2025 | Leadership, Women in healthcare, podcast
As deadly as the measles outbreak in west Texas and New Mexico is the spread of vaccine conspiracy theories and misinformation. According to KFF research from November 2024, childhood vaccination rates in the U.S. have been falling over the last few years following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Which means that leaders in immunization and public health have their work cut out for them.
“We are doubling down on our mission of supporting clinicians with evidence-based information and resources so they can make wise decisions about how to use vaccines in an optimal way,” says Kelly Moore, MD, MPH, President and CEO of Immunize.org. “We realize that healthcare professionals may have fewer options about where to get that kind of educational support now than they’ve had in the past. We plan to step up and make sure that they can count on us.”
One example? Recently the vaccine information statements needed to educate patients about the vaccines they receive temporarily got taken off the CDC website. “During that 24-hour period we put out a notice that we have all the vaccine information statements and their translations on our website, and people can come to us if they need them,” says Moore. She and her colleagues saw traffic to their website, which on a typical weekend is about 20,000 visitors, jump up to more than 47,000 visits that one day. “We wanted to make sure they could get the information they needed, when it wasn’t available from the CDC,” she says.
Listen to Episode 4 of Season 3 here.
On the other side of the world, at a press conference this past October, Piyali Mukherjee, Vice President of Medical Affairs for Moderna Asia Pacific, highlighted her company’s real-world evidence about the effectiveness and safety of its vaccines, specifically for COVID-19, which has been administered globally over 1 billion times. “Real-world studies show that Moderna booster shots reduced hospitalization rates by 89 percent,” she said.
Mukherjee, who began her journey in medicine as a frontline healthcare professional, as a doctor working in a small clinic in southern India, says that’s where she saw firsthand, every day, the impact of vaccination against infection. In that part of the world, she says, “a flu infection is just not like two days in bed, but it’s about daily wage workers not being able to go to work, so there’s no food for their children. This is where I really saw the power of vaccination.” And where her passion for preventive medicine was born.
Both Moore and Mukherjee believe that women are natural leaders in immunization advocacy because they tend to be the ones who focus on keeping others safe. “You know, whether they’re insisting on children wearing bicycle helmets, or wearing their seatbelt, or washing their hands before dinner, it tends to be the woman’s role to look out for that prevention, that advance protection.”
Listen to Episode 4 of Season 3 here.
In addition, moms are generally the ones who are responsible for keeping up with their child’s immunization schedules, in partnership with their child’s pediatrician. So women have a very natural role when it comes to safeguarding the health of themselves and their families.
“It really is extraordinary to see people from diverse backgrounds sharing this common vision,” says Moore. “And I think it’s because we can see the power of an intervention that doesn’t require people to change their lives or lifestyles. A vaccine simply protects them and visibly and allows them to continue their lives. And I think wherever you are in the world, you see the power of that and it’s quite moving.”
Hosted by Shanthi Voorn, PhD, Director of Clinical Strategy at Medscape.
Follow us on LinkedIn for updates on upcoming podcasts and more insightful conversations. For more information, please contact Jelena Spyropoulos.
Listen to Episode 4 of Season 3 here.
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