Bridging the Gaps: Overcoming System-Level Failures in Vaccination Equity (Michael Edelstein)

The presentation was delivered and recorded during the 10th Lifecourse Prevention Summit 2025.

In this briefing, Michael Edelstein challenges the assumption that making vaccines available to everyone is sufficient to achieve equity, and identifies three systemic failures that keep underserved groups under-vaccinated. First, he argues that socioeconomic deprivation alone does not explain under-vaccination, presenting evidence from communities that achieve high coverage despite disadvantage and identifying the system-level enablers that make this possible. Second, he highlights the limitations of measuring only vaccine uptake, showing that metrics such as timeliness and course completion reveal inequities that coverage figures alone conceal. Third, he warns against treating minority groups as homogeneous, arguing that interventions designed at a population level will fail if they do not account for the significant variation within communities.

His central message is that improving vaccination equity requires collecting and analyzing the right data, including qualitative, substratified, and timeliness data and that without this, programs will continue to miss the populations they most need to reach. This session further explores the subject in depth, highlighting key takeaways, implications for policy and practice, and insights from the expert presenter to help inform future strategies.