Jul 30, 2026 · 58 min · 13 segments
Have you ever wondered how and why people lose trust in the healthcare system? What makes a mother hesitant to vaccinate her child? Whose knowledge and experience are valued and prioritized in our…
Imani PowellGuest
Stella SafoHost
I'm an HIV primary care doctor and a public health advocate, and I'm so glad to be your host for this conversation series.
Today, we are talking about something that sits at the heart of public health, which is vaccine hesitancy and medical distrust.
And I want to be really clear that this is a conversation where we often get lots of very strong feelings.
Some people label hesitancy as something that is a negative thing to have, that is detrimental, but it's more than just skepticism, right? It comes from a place of caution that we can understand as being very reasonable when we consider some of the harms that have been done to different communities by medical institutions and public health institutions over time.
Things like the Tuskegee experiments or forced sterilization of black and brown women or the extraction of cells from Henrietta Lacks without her consent.
These are living legacies that shape how people think about their health care, their access to health care, the ways that their bodies are utilized by health and public health.
And so it's important that we acknowledge where trust breaks down so we can build that back up.
We want to be able to be real about the public health conversations that need to happen so we can build towards a better public health future.
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