biology

Heidi Larson

Heidi Larson is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Heidi Larson rather than just read about it. In short: Heidi J. Larson, Lady Piot is an American anthropologist and the founding director of the Vaccine Confidence Project.

Key takeaways

Heidi Larson belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Heidi Larson to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Heidi Larson from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Heidi J. Larson, Lady Piot is an American anthropologist and the founding director of the Vaccine Confidence Project. Larson headed Global Immunisation Communication at UNICEF and she is the author of Stuck: How Vaccine Rumors Start and Why They Don't Go Away. She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women of 2021.

Education and early career The daughter of a priest and civil rights advocate, Larson grew up in Massachusetts. Larson worked for Save the Children in the West Bank and in Nepal after college. Working abroad got her interested in anthropology and she eventually graduated from the University of California in that discipline. She earned a Ph.D. in 1990. She worked for several companies in the 1990s, including Apple and Xerox.

Work in immunisation Larson went back to UNICEF in 2000, working on global communications for several of the agency's vaccination programs. She developed an expertise on working with local health workers to defuse rumors that threatened to derail vaccination initiatives. She founded the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, which she still runs as of 2020, in addition to teaching anthropology, Risk and Decision Science. Since 2015, Larson has been leading a European Union project to support vaccination efforts in Sierra Leone, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, identifying and countering rumours that may reduce the effectiveness of the campaign. After working on ebola vaccination, the group is now debunking myths about the flu and COVID-19. Larson is Director of European Initiatives at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she co-chaired (alongside J. Stephen Morrison) the CSIS-LSHTM High-Level Panel on Vaccine Confidence and Misinformation in 2020. Describing herself as "a patient optimist", Larson understood early that significant efforts had to be made to fight misinformation about vaccines. Former UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said Larson "wasn't yelling 'The sky is falling', she was yelling, 'The sky could fall if we don't do something'". In a paper published in February 2021, Larson acknowledged extensive collaboration with, advisory board membership of, and funding from, vaccine manufacturers, especially the pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline and Merck & Co. Inc. She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women of 2021.

Other activities Virchow Prize for Global Health, Member of the Council (2022–present)

Personal life Larson is married to the Belgian virologist Peter Piot.

Selected publications

Larson, Heidi J. (2020). Stuck: How Vaccine Rumors Start and Why They Don't Go Away. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190077242. de Figueiredo, Alexandre; Simas, Clarissa; Karafillakis, Emilie; Paterson, Pauline; Larson, Heidi (September 10, 2020). "Mapping global trends in vaccine confidence and investigating barriers to vaccine uptake: a large-scale retrospective temporal modelling study". The Lancet. 396 (10255): 898–908. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31558-0. PMC 7607345. PMID 32919524. Larson, Heidi J.; Figueiredo, Alexandre de; Xiahong, Zhao; Schulz, William S.; Verger, Pierre; Johnston, Iain G.; Cook, Alex R.; Jones, Nick S. (October 1, 2016). "The State of Vaccine Confidence 2016: Global Insights Through a 67-Country Survey". eBioMedicine. 12: 295–301. doi:10.1016/j.ebiom.2016.08.042. ISSN 2352-3964. PMC 5078590. PMID 27658738. Archived from the original on June 2, 2019. Retrieved August 6, 2018.

References

External links Morrison, J. Stephen (September 17, 2010). "Transcript: Interview with Dr. Heidi Larson, Executive Director of the aids2031 Project". Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Heidi Larson

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Heidi Larson claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Heidi Larson before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Heidi Larson ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Heidi Larson

In research: Heidi Larson appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Heidi Larson in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Heidi Larson is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1957 births, 20th-century American anthropologists, 21st-century American anthropologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Heidi Larson outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Heidi Larson in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Heidi Larson means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Heidi Larson out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Heidi Larson in simple terms?

Heidi J. Larson, Lady Piot is an American anthropologist and the founding director of the Vaccine Confidence Project.

Why does Heidi Larson matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Heidi Larson?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Heidi Larson.