Economic toll of declining MMR vaccination

Economic toll of declining MMR vaccination

Author: PNAS August 17, 2026 Duration: 10:39

Economic costs of measles outbreaks

Science Sessions are brief conversations with cutting-edge researchers, National Academy members, and policymakers as they discuss topics relevant to today's scientific community. Learn the behind-the-scenes story of work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), plus a broad range of scientific news about discoveries that affect the world around us.

In this episode, Alison Galvani explains the costs of waning measles vaccination rates.

In this episode, we cover:
•[00:00] Introduction.
•[01:12] Epidemiologist Alison Galvani introduces the MMR vaccine and describes its efficacy.
•[02:23] Galvani recounts the changes in MMR vaccination rates in recent years.
•[03:56] She describes how the researchers modeled the economic impacts of measles outbreaks.
•[05:49] Galvani talks about what the economic impacts look like in everyday life.
•[06:39] She talks about the findings regarding the costs of measles outbreaks in 2025.
•[07:06] Galvani enumerates the costs of a percentage decrease in vaccination rates.
•[08:06] She lists the takeaways from the study, including the disproportionate societal effects of a small decrease in vaccination rates.
•[08:58] She lists the caveats and limitations of the study.
•[10:13] Conclusion.

About Our Guest:

Alison Galvani
Director, Center of Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis 
Yale School of Public Health

View related content here: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2605971123

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Tune into PNAS Science Sessions for a direct line to the people shaping modern science. Produced by PNAS, this podcast offers more than just summaries of published research; it’s where you hear the candid, often personal stories behind the headlines. Each episode features concise conversations with the researchers themselves-from emerging voices to established Academy members-alongside the policymakers whose decisions are informed by this work. You’ll get a genuine sense of the questions that drive these experts, the unexpected hurdles they face in their labs and field studies, and why their findings matter right now. The scope is deliberately wide, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of science itself, covering discoveries that range from microscopic processes to planetary-scale phenomena. This isn't about dry lectures, but about capturing the human endeavor of investigation. For anyone curious about how science actually unfolds and wants to understand the context of breakthroughs as they happen, this podcast serves as an essential, engaging resource. It connects the dots between a published paper in a prestigious journal and the real-world implications that ripple out from it.
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