The data that this paper draws on were collected in the late 1990s and some may wonder at their currency. We believe that this might be a problem if the focus of the paper was about which diseases or vaccines are an issue; with scares and controversies these can change over time. The point of this paper however, has been to examine the utility of synthesizing theories of health protective behaviours, risk perception and decision-making. While we recognise that different socio-temporal contexts may create different issues (e.g. the impact of the MMR controversy was substantially greater in the UK than Australia), we argue that the approach we have taken in this paper provides a framework for us to make sense of people's reactions to and perceptions of old (and new) diseases and vaccinations at any time. We therefore think this work can contribute to, and be of particular importance in informing the public health approaches to new flu epidemics. It provides data supporting commentary and critique of the current public health approach to the issues of vaccine risk and immunisation uptake, being that continued provision of better risk information is not the answer [7] .