The COVID-19 pandemic and the rollout of multiple safe and effective vaccines worldwide have drawn attention to the new challenge of vaccination as it is believed that it is vaccination, and not vaccines, that would halt the pandemic. However, current vaccine promotion strategies have evolved much slowly around the globe and vaccine-related studies have primarily focused on investigating the technical side of the matter, such as vaccine efficacy and safety. It is worth noticing that other factors including vaccine apathy, anti-vaccine conspiracy beliefs, perceived disease vulnerability, perceived vaccine danger, and mistrust in science/scientists that may directly or indirectly influence vaccine uptake remain under-investigated. Among all these, vaccine apathy is one of the least discussed factors in the literature.

Vaccine apathy is generally used to describe a group of people who are disinterested in or have slightly negative attitudes towards vaccines or vaccination in general. In other words, an apathetic population lacks the motivation to receive the vaccine and simply does not care whether or not to be vaccinated. This concept is different from vaccine hesitancy in that, people who are hesitant about the vaccine are completely more reluctant to receive safe and recommended vaccines compared to apathetic individuals. However, apathetic populations have yet to make the psychological investment required to be described as hesitant. According to current research works, when developing vaccination promotion campaigns, these two populations should be considered distinct.

Prior to the COVID 19 pandemic, the reluctance of individuals to receive safe and recommended vaccines was already a growing concern. Understanding whether people are willing to be vaccinated, the reasons why they are unwilling or apathetic, is necessary for increasing vaccination rates across age groups. In addition, studies have revealed that despite vaccine apathy, which has an adverse effect on vaccine coverage, exists across a variety of socioeconomic groups, the reasons for apathy can be quite diverse. Therefore, in order to achieve national vaccination goals and vaccine equity targets in the next wave of vaccine promotion, the development of specific vaccine promotion messages to combat vaccine apathy may be a crucial element.

The goal of this Research Topic is to publish a collection of articles that focuses on the identification, evaluation, and formation of vaccine apathy, as well as strategies to address vaccine apathy, decrease vaccine apathy and improve the coverage rate of vaccination, and the prospects of vaccine apathy. This research topic welcomes (but not limited to) submissions of original articles, reviews and systematic reviews, study proposal, short communications, brief research report, points and other types of articles pertaining the following subtopics:

• Developing a systematic diagnostic tool of vaccine apathy to identify and compare apathy in various global settings;
• Assessment of epidemiological characteristics of vaccine apathy;
• Empirical research on vaccine apathy among target populations (children, adolescents, adults, patients, etc.);
• Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, virus diversity, vaccination strategies and other social factors of vaccine apathy and global health;
• Epidemiological and risk evaluation studies on the effect of vaccine apathy on population health;
• Approaches for conducting public health risk assessments on vaccine apathy;
• Inventions to overcome and prevent vaccine apathy and hesitancy;
• Psychological factors associated with vaccine apathy;
• Ways to diminish vaccine apathy and increase vaccination coverage rates;
• Public health and economic consequences of apathy toward routine vaccines；
• Cost-effective COVID-19 related strategies during vaccination;
• Public health strategies initiatives aimed at combating vaccine apathy and their anticipated effect on population health.

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Frontiers in Public Health

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