Putting a person face-to-face with the misery of vaccine-preventable diseases may be an effective way to overcome vaccine hesitancy, a study suggests.

Researchers from Brigham Young University in the US took a novel approach to improving attitudes among students who were vaccine-hesitant by showing them the effects of vaccine-preventable diseases.

“Vaccine attitudes improved when the participants gained a personal understanding of how vaccine-preventable diseases affect individuals and communities,” the authors wrote in the journal Vaccine.

In the study, a group of 298 biology students from Provo, a city in Utah that ranks sixth in the US for undervaccinated kindergarten-aged children, were surveyed to determine their attitudes towards vaccination.