Peter Rønø Thingholm

We explore the role that physicians play in moderating compliance with recommended vaccinations. Using administrative data on the universe of Danish children and their healthcare providers, we first construct and validate a measure of providers’ propensities to comply with recommended vaccinations from birth to age 6 based on a two-way fixed effects model. We then show that the constructed measure of provider vaccination facilitation meaningfully affects uptake of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine among adolescent patients, and speeds recovery from a media-induced crisis to perceived HPV vaccine safety. We also demonstrate that providers affect decisions beyond those of their own patients, influencing uptake for patients’ younger cousins affiliated with other providers by about one-quarter as much as own patients.