This is why Aussie parents aren’t vaccinating their kids, and how to turn it around

Cost is proving to be a major reason Aussie kids aren’t getting vaccinated. But there’s a way to fix it and bring levels back up.

A growing number of Australian parents are not vaccinating their children, but access and cost is impacting many families more than vaccine hesitancy.

Now a new study has outlined practical strategies experts say can help improve childhood vaccine uptake in Australia.

It builds on a national 2024 survey that showed the surprising reasons for the decline in vaccination rates among children under five, which are at their lowest in a decade.

Researchers from the National Vaccination Insights project team identified key barriers.

They include issues like out-of-pocket costs, difficulty getting GP appointments, lack of opportunities to discuss vaccination with providers and eroding trust.

Using this information, the researchers have now developed evidence-based strategies to help reverse the decline.

Professor Margie Danchin leads the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute’s Vaccine Uptake Group. Picture: Jason Sammon

“It is serious,” said co-author Professor Margie Danchin, who leads the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute’s Vaccine Uptake Group and serves on the expert reference group for the National Immunisation Strategy.

“Australian vaccination rates have declined every year for the last five years,” she said.

“We know what the barriers are. We know what the solutions are, and we need strong government endorsement, changing policy and investment to turn this around before we are looking at an epidemic of measles like the US, Vietnam or India.”

The call for action comes as US President Donald Trump this week claimed paracetamol was a “big factor” in autism and has also implicated vaccines as a cause of autism.

Vaccine sceptic and US health and human services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr also recently cut $500 million in funding for work on mRNA vaccines.

Professor Terry Slevin, CEO of the Public Health Association of Australia, said reversing the decline in childhood vaccination coverage was a public health priority.

US President Donald Trump at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City this week. Photo: Ludovic Marin / AFP)

“The power and reach of social media, the challenges raised by Covid and misinformation around immunisation coming out of the USA mean it has never been more important to boost access to and confidence in vaccines,” he said.

The Association published the new research in its journal the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health on Friday.

Professor Danchin said Australia’s falling vaccine rates in children were not only because of hesitancy or families influenced by vaccine sceptics.

“There are families genuinely struggling to get their children vaccinated who want to get them vaccinated,” she said.

“The biggest take-home message from our paper is that the barriers are both access and acceptance issues, including hesitancy and refusal.

“That’s why it has been important for us to understand the barriers for parents who partially vaccinate versus totally unvaccinated and come up with strategies for both.”

She said partially vaccinated children experienced more practical barriers to vaccination.

“We need policy solutions to help these families such as more bulk billed appointments and weekend and after hours clinics

A growing number of Australian parents are not vaccinating their children. Picture: iStock

Lead author Dr Kasia Bolsewicz, a research fellow at the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, said declining vaccination rates emphasised that urgent, co-ordinated action across policy, program, healthcare and community settings was needed.

The researchers said no single intervention would solve the problem.

Professor Danchin said key was using a multi-pronged approach to improve access as well as building capacity among healthcare providers.

This included providing more time for them to answer parents’ questions and strong community engagement to build trust in different cultural groups and communities, as well as using high quality data to create a dashboard to inform about local vaccination rates.

“There is a sense of urgency about this; we don’t want to pay lip service to it. This paper highlights the evidence on what works, much of which we learnt during Covid. We now need to roll up our sleeves and start implementing these strategies if we are serious about turning things around.”

Originally published as This is why Aussie parents aren’t vaccinating their kids, and how to turn it around