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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1434513
This article is part of the Research Topic Vaccine Education and Promotion View all 22 articles

Vaccination: a look at the social representations of Brazilian children

Provisionally accepted
Suelen de Gaspi Suelen de Gaspi 1,2*Carlos Alberto De Oliveira Magalhães Júnior Carlos Alberto De Oliveira Magalhães Júnior 3Rosa Branca Tracana Rosa Branca Tracana 4Eduarda Maria Schneider Eduarda Maria Schneider 5Graça S. Carvalho Graça S. Carvalho 6
  • 1 Instituto Federal do Paraná, Goioerê, Brazil
  • 2 Federal Institute of Paraná, Brazil, Goioerê, Brazil
  • 3 State University of Maringá, Maringá, Brazil
  • 4 CI&DEI-ESECD-IPG, Portugal, Guarda, Portugal
  • 5 Federal Technological University of Paraná, Brazil, Santa Helena, Brazil
  • 6 CIEC, University of Minho, Portugal, Braga, Portugal

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has accentuated the debate on the need for vaccination and called into question the need to increasingly bring this topic, which is widely disseminated in the scientific world, to school classes at all schooling phases. In this scenario, science education plays a key role in disseminating knowledge about the importance of vaccination and the impacting factors of a lack of immunisation. In order to better understand this movement, it is necessary to understand the representations of individuals as a way of broadening paths to change this scenario. Objectives: This study aimed to identify and analyse Brazilian primary school children's social representations of vaccination. Methods: Using the free word recall technique, the term "vaccination" was applied to evoke children's ideas. The analysis of co-occurrences of evocations permitted us to identify their representations' centrality. Results: The results showed that the centralising elements guiding these children's social representations were "needle", "pain", and "health centre". Conclusions: These results show the need to prevent the phobia of needles that arises in the first vaccination experiences and reinforce the importance of discussing the subject of vaccination in science teaching. This issue is even more critical, given the spread and impact of "fake news" on social media. There is an increasing need to emphasise the importance of vaccination, not only as a factor of individual protection but also as a commitment to collective health. This study also showed that the school, as usual, must become an ally in tackling this reality with children and their families.

    Keywords: Central core, Immunisation, Science teaching, Anti-vaccination, Health

    Received: 18 May 2024; Accepted: 29 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Gaspi, Magalhães Júnior, Tracana, Schneider and Carvalho. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Suelen de Gaspi, Instituto Federal do Paraná, Goioerê, Brazil

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.