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Vaccines are a public health intervention that produce a common good, yet are enacted on individual bodies. Health professionals and policymakers seeking to promote vaccination must weigh competing values, such as autonomy and justice, as they consider how to respond to individuals who refuse vaccines for themselves or their children. Further complicating this aim, people’s attitudes toward vaccination are shaped by divergent ideas about the meaning of health and social responsibility, as well as by their trust in scientific institutions and knowledge. In other words, scientific evidence alone cannot resolve vaccine controversies; navigating science and values together is vital to achieving just policy in a democratic society. In this course, students will analyze academic essays that address why vaccine hesitancy persists, and what we should do about it. Students will learn to recognize common elements of academic arguments, and apply them to construct their own arguments about the social and ethical dimensions of vaccination.