“Keep the Vaccine Down South”
The COVID‐19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of vaccines to prevent infectious diseases, but also the issues related to vaccine acceptance among individuals and groups targeted by vaccination programs. The concept of vaccine hesitancy is now commonly used in public health spheres to refer to the fact that a portion of the population has significant doubts and concerns about vaccines that can lead to a vaccine refusal or delay. Most research on vaccine hesitancy focuses on individual knowledge, beliefs, values, attitudes, life trajectories and experiences. However, the focus on individual determinants of vaccine hesitancy can lessen the importance of broader structural and socio-cultural influences on attitudes and decisions about immunization. Based on interviews conducted in Nunavik, this article proposes to explore how organizational and historical factors, social norms, and shared values and beliefs about the etiology of COVID‐19 and the efficacy and usefulness of vaccines to prevent the virus, influence COVID‐19 vaccine hesitancy in Inuit communities.