Licentiate thesis 19 June 2018: Favelle Lamb

On Tuesday June 19, Favelle Lamb will defend her licentiate thesis "Vaccine safety, vaccine effectiveness and other determinants for successful immunisation programmes".

The examination board is made up by Associate Professor Sofia Carlsson from the Institute of Environmental Medicine (KI), Doctor Helena Hervius Askling from Institute of Medicine (KI) and Professor Inge Axelsson from Department of Nursing Sciences (Mid Sweden University). Favelle's supervisors are Lisen Arnheim-Dahlström, Pär Sparén and Alexander Ploner.

The studies in Favelle's thesis examined several key determinants for successful uptake of vaccinations in the Nordic countries, with focus on vaccine safety and vaccine effectiveness. The results show just how complex the improvement of vaccination programmes can be. On one hand, we see the difficulties in assessing what went wrong following the introduction of a vaccine into a population – it is not always possible to predict a rare outcome from a mass vaccination campaign, so vaccine safety becomes a paramount concern from a societal perspective. We also see what happens when a vaccine proves its effectiveness in a population-based setting to the point where the number of doses can be reduced without compromising its effectiveness. Improving the vaccination programmes is, therefore, a complex multifactorial problem with many key determinants that can change depending on the vaccine in question e.g. mass vaccination versus routine vaccination.

Time and location: 12:00, 19 June 2018 in the lecture hall Petrén, Nobels väg 12 B, Karolinska Institutet, Solna