When researchers asked Australian parents whether they had heard anything recently about childhood vaccination that worried them, one in seven (14%) said yes.<\/p>\n
They reported hearing misinformation including a debunked link between childhood immunisation and autism, as well as disparaging comments about vaccines made by Donald Trump, the US president, leading researchers to suspect that many messages coming out of the US<\/a> were cutting through.<\/p>\n Amid this noise, some parents concluded that if childhood vaccination \u201cwas 100% safe, there wouldn\u2019t be all this contradictory information circulating\u201d, said Dr Jess Kaufman, the National Vaccination Insights project lead researcher.<\/p>\n It in part explains why the 2025 survey released this week<\/a> showed that parents were less accepting of routine childhood vaccines than they were last year.<\/p>\n The nationally representative survey of more than 2,000 parents of children under five in 2024 found that practical difficulties parents face such as cost and travel were the most significant<\/a> reasons for not vaccinating children, but in 2025 the survey revealed that parents were now more influenced by beliefs and concerns about the vaccines themselves.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n Across the parents surveyed, a reported lack of trust in information from healthcare providers rose from 6.4% to 8.8%, while those who reported not believing that vaccines were safe rose from 6% to 8.3%.<\/p>\n The group with the most substantial increases in concerns compared with last year were parents of partly vaccinated children, meaning their children got some vaccines but not others, Kaufman said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I do think the information environment does is it amplifies and validates people\u2019s concerns. So people who are on the fence already might be finding a lot more messaging that aligns with their worries and that can make them a little bit more hesitant,\u201d Kaufman said.<\/p>\n The record high rate<\/a> of childhood vaccination Australia achieved in 2020 \u2013 surpassing the government\u2019s target of 95%, which provides \u201cherd immunity\u201d \u2013 has declined in the years since the Covid-19 pandemic, with the most recent government data<\/a> showing that only 93.17% of all five-year-olds are fully vaccinated, 89.57% of two-year-olds and 91.54% of one-year-olds.<\/p>\n Between the ages of two months and five years, Australian children can receive free vaccines through the government\u2019s National Immunisation Program<\/a>, which covers 18 vaccine-preventable diseases, including hepatitis B, diphtheria, whooping cough, meningococcal, polio, mumps, measles and rubella.<\/p>\n Many states have had an increased risk of some of these diseases, especially measles, as people return from overseas holidays in countries where there are outbreaks<\/a>.<\/p>\n Like in the US, where a measles outbreak occurred in the Mennonite community in Texas, Prof Catherine Bennett, Deakin University chair of epidemiology, said Australia has seen an expansion of networks in our population less likely to get vaccinated<\/a>.<\/p>\n