The topic I have decided to try to research is "herd immunity and public health". I realize this is pretty broad but this is what I have gotten so far. I have had a hard time deciding what exactly to research, but at least I can get something out of this topic and run with it. My decision was between this one and something else vaccine-related. I was trying to take the idea of vaccines and push it as far as herd immunity. The one article I started with is called "Protecting Our Herd: How a National Mandatory Vaccination Policy Protects Public Health by Ensuring Herd Immunity". This article describes what vaccines are, what they do, and what herd immunity is. It asks the reader the why question, "why vaccinate?". This question then leads to the answer within the article basically saying vaccinate so that the rest of the population can stay healthy as well. The reason I picked this topic was because I knew I could find a little bit of a debate on it. Some think vaccinating is pointless if there is such a thing as herd immunity, however, others point out that without vaccines, there would be no herd immunity. I searched on the American Journal of Public Health to find something that included both public health and vaccinations. When I found something I liked or something that drew my attention, I went to the university library website and found the full article online. It took me a long time to even come up with some kind of research topic, so finding one article took forever. Trying to find something to research has been extremely hard and frustrating, especially with how much I have going on right now with other classes already in full swing and working on top of that, it was hard to focus my attention on just finding a topic. However, so far this was all I was able to come up with, but at least with this I can work with it and narrow my topic down to something much more specific.


Tolsma, E. C. (2015). Protecting our herd: How a national mandatory vaccination policy protects public health by ensuring herd immunity. The Journal of Gender, Race, and Justice, 18(1), 313-339. Retrieved from http://unr.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.unr.idm.oclc.org/docview/1679907392?accountid=452