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The objective of this experiment is to assess whether priming for contamination and purity causes a change in attitudes to health interventions, including vaccination, and complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs). An online priming experiment was conducted with four between-subject experimental conditions including photos of: 1) biological contamination, 2) chemical contamination, 3) pure environments, such as pristine landscapes, and 4) hazard signs/icons indicating physical threats. Two control conditions included photos of neutral scenes and neutral icons, whereby experimental groups were compared against the related control groups (photograph for conditions 1-3 and neutral icons for condition 4). Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the six conditions, and after exposure to the images they were asked to rate 10 conventional and alternative health interventions for effectiveness and safety, as well being assessed for disgust sensitivity using the reduced-item DPSS-R [10]. A total of 642 adults completed the experiment. Exposure to primes did not cause a differential change in ratings of health interventions. Nevertheless, higher levels of sensitivity to disgust were associated with lower ratings of the effectiveness of MMR vaccination, tetanus injection, antibiotics, and surgery; and higher levels of sensitivity to disgust were associated with higher ratings of effectiveness of vitamins/minerals. In conclusion, this online experiment did not find an experimental effect of priming for contamination and purity on subjects' ratings of the safety and effectiveness of conventional and alternative health interventions. This indicates that attitudes to these health interventions are not influenced by a temporary increase in the salience of feelings of contamination or purity. However, individual differences in disgust sensitivity are related to their attitudes to vaccination and CAM interventions., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The present study is the first to examine associations between area-level socio-demographic factors and uptake of vaccination among 5-year old children throughout Australia. A public-health focused ecological methodology was used that combined postcode-level socio-demographic variables from the 2016 Census with postcode-level vaccination data. Analyses included one-way analysis of variance and assessment of linear trends for each socio-demographic variable across five categories of vaccination rate; ranging from lowest (≤90%) to highest (96.1-100%), as well as using vaccination rate as a continuous variable. Multiple regression analysis was also conducted using select indicators to predict vaccination rates in postcodes from major cities. The results of the univariate analyses showed that communities with lower rates of vaccination had relatively less disadvantage, and had relatively greater education and occupation status, as measured by SEIFA (ABS [4]). When we looked at the ASGS Remoteness Areas, we saw that the vaccination rates were lowest in postcodes from the major cities of Australia, and vaccination rates increased as communities became more remote. When the community is further refined to postcodes located in the major cities, and to the target group of parents/partners in a family with children aged 4-7, we found that postcodes with lower vaccination rates were characterised as having a relatively greater proportion of people with: a high education level (bachelor degree level or higher); having white-collar jobs as managers; having no religion, having people in the older age category (50-54); and conversely being unemployed., (Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

We examined the relationship between complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use and vaccination scepticism; and specifically whether a person's more general health-related worldview might explain this relationship. A cross-sectional online survey of adult Australians (N = 2697) included demographic, CAM, and vaccination measures, as well as the holistic and magical health belief scales (HHB, MHB). HHB emphasises links between mind and body health, and the impact of general 'wellness' on specific ailments or resistance to disease, whilst MHB specifically taps ontological confusions and cognitive errors about health. CAM and anti-vaccination were found to be linked primarily at the attitudinal level (r = -0.437). We did not find evidence that this was due to CAM practitioners influencing their clients. Applying a path-analytic approach, we found that individuals' health worldview (HHB and MHB) accounted for a significant proportion (43.1%) of the covariance between CAM and vaccination attitudes. MHB was by far the strongest predictor of both CAM and vaccination attitudes in regressions including demographic predictors. We conclude that vaccination scepticism reflects part of a broader health worldview that discounts scientific knowledge in favour of magical or superstitious thinking. Therefore, persuasive messages reflecting this worldview may be more effective than fact-based campaigns in influencing vaccine sceptics., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)