Having a doctor in the family changes whether people trust vaccine advice

A study of Dutch medical school applicants and their older relatives found that people over 60 are more likely to get a second COVID booster if they have a family member who is a physician. The effect is strongest when that physician is a woman, suggesting that how medical expertise gets communicated inside families matters as much as whether the expertise exists.

This is about trust, not information. People have access to the same public health recommendations regardless of whether they know a doctor. What changes is belief. A family doctor's quiet example—or endorsement—shifts behavior in ways that government campaigns, media coverage, and abstract expertise do not. The finding also reveals that medicine itself is gendered: female doctors appear to be more persuasive to older relatives than male doctors doing the same job, which means vaccination rates and health compliance aren't neutral outcomes of neutral expertise.