Giving Compass' Take:

• In this podcast from NPR's Morning Edition, David Greene interviews Jennifer Reich about the reasons for and implications of vaccine hesitancy.

• Reich avoids using the term "anti-vaxxer," preferring "vaccine hesitancy." What is important about this distinction? How does understanding the concerns of vaccine-hesitant parents enable advocates to make a more compelling case for vaccination?

• To learn about three ethical arguments for vaccinating your children, click here.

The U.S. went from measles-free in 2000 to the largest outbreak in 25 years. NPR's David Greene talks to Jennifer Reich, author of Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Doctors and disease experts are battling to contain the nation's largest measles outbreak since the virus was deemed eliminated in 2000. And one vital part of their work is education. In some communities, there is still resistance to vaccinations.

So in this whole conversation, we've heard the term anti-vaxxers a lot. You use the term vaccine hesitancy. What do you mean by that?

[JENNIFER] REICH:

In all of the groups of parents that work to even oppose vaccine mandates, none of them would call themselves anti-vaccine. Rather, where parents are describing themselves is committed to informed consent and supportive of individual choice when it comes to their children's health. And I try to be true to the way parents describe themselves when it comes to this important topic.

What I find is that parents see each and every vaccine as a different kind of choice and that they see each of their children as unique. And therefore, they want to be able to tailor what they see as what's most important to their own child, whether it's how they perceive the benefits of that vaccine or the risks to their child of that vaccine. I've talked to families that give different children in the family different vaccines or come up with different schedules for each child in their family because they don't accept a logic that there's sort of a one-size-fits-all schedule ... that they see reflected in how the CDC promotes vaccines.

Read the full interview about vaccinations by David Green at NPR