Vaccine hesitancy reflects concerns about the decision to vaccinate oneself or one's children. There is a broad range of factors contributing to vaccine hesitancy, including the compulsory nature of vaccines, their coincidental temporal relationships to adverse health outcomes, unfamiliarity with vaccine-preventable diseases, and lack of trust in corporations and public health agencies. In addition, the very success of vaccine programs has seemingly fueled increasing vaccine concern as vaccine-preventable diseases are no longer prevalent in the United States. This decrease in prevalence has led the attention of the public to shift from the necessity of vaccines to the safety of the vaccines themselves. In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the heavy economic and public health toll it has taken, it became clear that a vaccine may be the “magic bullet”. In the midst of a pandemic that is taking thousands of lives and has been devastating society, many people will find these uncertainties acceptable. While for others, as with many trade-offs, the benefit may have less emotional resonance than the possibility, no matter how small, of a potential risk. My research seeks to understand the risk perceptions of vaccination in an adult population in the Puget Sound region of Washington state. My hypothesis suggests that social proximity to COVID-19 will influence vaccine decision making & vaccine risk perception. I will be using the annual influenza shot as well as assessing smaller recent outbreaks to build a framework for my thesis. Understanding the factors that are influencing adults, when it comes to vaccine decision making, may help inform strategies for state and public health officials in their multifaceted roles of communicating effectively on the benefits and safety of vaccines to policy makers, media, and the public as a means to better support informed decision making.