AAMC The key to understanding and fighting the forces that fuel measles and other viral outbreaks is better communication with families, says infectious disease physician Adam Ratner, MD, MPH. The day in 2018 that a child with measles showed up at his New York City hospital was a watershed moment for infectious disease specialist Adam J. Ratner, MD, MPH. Part of the measles outbreak that emerged from Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn and New York’s Rockland County, it heralded a comeback of the highly contagious disease in communities around the country that continues today.
“What I learned over the ensuing months changed the way that I thought about vaccines, about how we communicate, and about what measles in particular, but vaccine-preventable diseases in general, mean in terms of how we think about public health,” he told attendees of the session, “Outbreak of Mistrust: What Measles Teaches Us Now,” at Learn Serve Lead 2025: The AAMC Annual Meeting, on Tuesday, Nov. 4.
In his book, Booster Shots: The Urgent Lessons of Measles and the Uncertain Future of Children’s Health, Ratner traces the history of measles outbreaks, including its inequitable effects on lower socioeconomic groups, the eventual development of a highly effective vaccine, and the rise of vaccine hesitancy. What he discovered is that measles outbreaks are often hyper local.
“The story of measles is largely about our communities, not even about national or state policy matters,” he said. “This all plays out at the level of not only counties, but in school districts and neighborhoods. The reason that we had those outbreaks in New York was because of targeting of an insular community, and they were preyed upon by the anti-vaccine movement to the detriment of children.”