‘We Protect The People That We Love’

HARTFORD, CT — The Connecticut Department of Public Health unveiled a new public awareness video campaign Wednesday featuring bright, charismatic characters and catchy music to help parents and caregivers make informed decisions regarding vaccines for their children.

The campaign, titled Protect Who Matters Most, premiered at the Connecticut Science Center in Hartford. Officials from the Department of Public Health (DPH), members of the creative teams that produced the video, and U.S. Rep. John Larson, D-1st District, were on hand to discuss the importance of the effort.

The campaign consists of four videos, styled after the famous Schoolhouse Rock brand of educational cartoons for children. Each video discusses a different aspect of vaccines and immunizations, including a history lesson about the creation of vaccines, how they work, common questions and side effects, and the vaccine approval process.

Each video features colorful animated characters and music written to fall into four popular categories: indie rock, hip-hop, latin pop, and electronica. The videos are available in both English and Spanish.

DPH Commissioner Dr. Manisha Juthani said that the timing of the new campaign is intentional, as students will be returning to school in a few weeks just as the respiratory illness season is kicking into full gear. Common threats during this time include Covid, influenza, and RSV. 

“This campaign is just part of a broader effort, supporting providers, working with community partners, and making sure families have the tools they need,” she said to the gathered audience. “And because public health cannot accomplish these goals in a silo, we have all of you here today to make sure that we’ve got health care providers and community organizations and parents to join us in this initiative, because we know that people vaccinate their families for the simple reasons that we protect the people that we love.”

One of the major goals of the campaign is to shift public health discourse away from simply believing experts, to empowering parents and caregivers to ask questions about vaccines if they are unsure, without fear. Larson spoke to the shift, saying that people need to feel that better inquiry will lead to better, science-based solutions to public health problems.

“We want the public to inquire,” Larson said. “We want them to understand. We want them to feel comfortable asking questions, especially in this day and age when things can become confusing. And things that you hear on the internet and social media should not be confused with science and truth and what really matters.”

The evening also featured a moving example of what widely adopted vaccinations can mean for people with compromised immune systems. Brittany Molina, director of communications and public information officer at DPH, shared the story of her son, Hector, who was born with a congenital heart defect. By five weeks he’d already had his first open heart surgery, and his recovery left him fragile with an immune system unable to fight off infection.

Molina said she and her son relied on the vaccination efforts of others to protect her son while he grew stronger during his recovery and growth. 

“I cannot do this alone,” she said. “Because while Hector is catching up, he’s depending on the parents in this room, the neighbors, cousins, teachers, strangers in the grocery store. He’s depending on parents to vaccinate their children, to get their flu shot, to stay up to date, so that the viruses that circulate every fall, winter, and year-round really have fewer places to land, fewer people to travel through before they reach a baby whose body is not yet ready to fight them.”

Maura Fitzgerald, the DPH’s chief marketing officer, described how the department used AI to determine which messages would be most effective, using research from vaccine and government-skeptical groups. The process produced a red light, yellow light, green light list of phrases that shouldn’t be used, could be used with proper context, or would go over fine with the target audience.

“As we were developing the scripts and the lyrics, they were able to take that into account,” she said. “And I think the end result is really four videos that you’ll see that speak to the movable middle, the people who might be questioning vaccines, but they can still be kind of won over and brought to our side.”

Connecticut boasts one of the highest Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccination rates for children in the country, with 98.6% of children enrolled in schools vaccinated. However, the state is still facing challenges from once-eliminated diseases such as measles. While there have been no large-scale outbreaks, the state’s first measles case of 2026 was reported in an unvaccinated adult in June, followed by a second case a few weeks later.