How can one person’s health decision affect an entire community? Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Nicole Creanza is helping middle and high school students answer that question through a free interactive classroom resource based on real-world data.
“Community Immunity: A simulation-based exploration of vaccination choices” is a two-lesson unit for students in grades 8–12. The interactive tool simulates a public health outbreak to help students understand community immunity. As they move through the experience, students encounter information about disease risk, vaccine statistics, social influences, access, and public policy. Their individual decisions help to determine whether an outbreak fizzles out or becomes an epidemic.
“We wanted students to think about vaccination in a broader scientific context than just an individual medical decision,” said Creanza. “People’s attitudes about vaccines can be influenced by their knowledge, by their community, and by social media, and yet all of these influences do not always predict what choices people make. Those individual choices then combine to have community-level health consequences.”
To create the simulation, Creanza partnered with experts who all have a Vanderbilt affiliation: scientific research consultant and former Vanderbilt postdoctoral scholar Kerri-Ann Anderson; public health expert and Vanderbilt alumna Katie Delisio Waller, BA’06; and Galactic Polymath, an education studio that translates current research into free classroom materials, founded by Vanderbilt alumnus Matthew Wilkins, BA’06. This team assembled data on infection cases and vaccination rates from various sources, including primary medical literature and data from the Centers for Disease Control. Anderson and Creanza then built the mathematical models of vaccine beliefs and behaviors that informed the (much simpler) model used in the classroom simulation. Both the research and educational aspects of the project were funded by a National Science Foundation initiative called “Integrating Human Behavior into Epidemiological Models,” which brings together research on mathematics, biology, and cultural factors to bolster human health (NSF-DMS-2421378).
Rather than simply telling students how vaccination rates impact communities, Community Immunity lets them watch disease dynamics unfold in a simulated class of students. The simulation uses storytelling, data visualizations, and light gamification to make concepts such as infectiousness, relative risk, vaccination rates, and community immunity—all based on real-world data—visible and interactive.
Students can see in real time how changing vaccination levels alter the course of an outbreak and compare the risks associated with disease and vaccination using evidence tied to published sources.
“In working on the Community Immunity Sim over the last five months, we’ve consolidated statistics and created visuals that don’t exist anywhere else in order to demystify public health guidance,” said Wilkins. “In real life, we are rarely even aware of when vaccines protect us. That’s why simulation visuals are really powerful. Instead of just memorizing a definition of herd immunity, people can actually see what it is and why it matters.”
In the unit’s second lesson, students travel back to the 1950s, when families across the United States were deciding whether to take advantage of the recently developed vaccine to protect against the scourge of polio. Students take on the role of a parent at the time, analyze historical sources describing polio and the experimental vaccine, and decide whether they would vaccinate their child.
That history is personal for Delisio Waller. Her mother contracted polio as a child—an experience that helped shape her eventual career in public health.
“My mom got infected with polio at the age of six. This was right after the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines had been introduced, and just as she was in the midst of the multi-dose vaccine series. While she survived the virus, it left her permanently disabled; the leg muscles in her left leg stopped growing, and to this day, she can’t walk without a brace.”
Delisio Waller adds that seeing the profound impact that illness and lifelong disability can have on a person was a big part of what inspired her to enter the field of public health. “I’m passionate about preventing disease to enable everyone to live their full potential, and vaccines are one of the most powerful tools we have to accomplish that.”
Community Immunity was designed primarily for high school science classrooms but deliberately crosses disciplinary boundaries. Students examine infectious disease dynamics alongside questions about risk, trust, social influence, access, and public policy.
The free resource includes the simulation, two lessons for grades 8-12, teacher materials and classroom activities, evidence-linked disease and vaccine risk data, and more. All materials are available for free online; educators can use the unit immediately.