COVID-19, Vaccines, and Vaccine Hesitancy 

Tara Kirk Sell, Ph.D. and Calvin T. Williams Jr, M.D., Ph.D.

Recorded on June 4, 2021

2 CE Credits

We are now over a year into the pandemic and now with vaccines, there have been a lot of questions about safely seeing patients in person. The presentation will start with an overview of the pandemic in general and the COVID vaccines specifically including efficacy and potential side effects. We will then move onto vaccine hesitancy, misinformation, and ways to approach and communicate about these issues. 

After attending this workshop, attendees will be able to 

  • Explain the efficacy and potential side effects of the various types of COVID vaccines
  • Assess how being vaccinated impacts risks associated with common daily activities 
  • Describe vaccine hesitancy, misinformation and prepare communication approaches for them
REGISTER 

Dr. Calvin T. Williams, Jr., MD/Ph.D. is an infectious disease physician practicing at Medstar Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland since 2016. He has served as the Chief of Infectious Disease at Union Memorial Hospital since 2017; he is also the Co-Chair of the Joint  Antibiotic Stewardship Committee and the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee for Medstar Union Memorial Hospital and Good Samaritan Hospitals both since 2017.  Additionally, he has been the physician Lead of the Infection Prevention and Control Program at Medstar Union Memorial Hospital since 2017.  He completed his medical and graduate school training within the MD/Ph.D. program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 2011. He went on to complete residency training in Internal Medicine at Christiana Care in Delaware in 2014 and completed fellowship training in Infectious Disease at the University of Maryland in 2016. Dr. Calvin Williams is a member of the inpatient Internal Medicine Faculty. In addition, he provides inpatient infectious disease consults. He is involved in antibiotic utilization as well as infection control at MedStar Union Memorial Hospital. He completed medical school at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He completed residency training in Internal Medicine at Christiana Care in Delaware and completed fellowship training in Infectious Disease at the University of Maryland.

Dr. Tara Kirk Sell, Ph.D. is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Sell’s work focuses on improving public health policy and practice in order to reduce the health impacts of disasters and terrorism. She has led several studies on public health communication during the Zika outbreak and misinformation during the 2014 Ebola outbreak. She is now working on understanding misinformation during the COVID-19 outbreak. Prior to her work in academia, she was a professional athlete and won a silver medal in the 2004 Olympics.