Public Health Messages to Address Vaccine Hesitancy

Developing and Evaluating Public Health Messages to Address Vaccine Hesitancy

Views on vaccines range from those who are strongly supportive to those who are stridently opposed and will not budge from identity-based core beliefs about vaccines. In between these poles are numerous others who can delay, be reluctant (but still accept), or refuse/accept some vaccines for their children but not others. It is for these vaccine-hesitant parents that constitute the 'middle ground' of this spectrum where the most immediate and productive gains can be made towards enhancing vaccination acceptance and improving uptake. However, navigating this noisy communications environment is difficult, given the array of confusing and conflicting information available from multiple and competing sources. To date, there is no consensus on how best to use communication to respond to vaccine hesitancy. Building on two Canada-wide surveys of parents, the goal of this research is to identify which communication strategies show the greatest impact in reducing parental vaccine hesitancy and improving vaccination intentions.

The specific objectives are to:

1. Develop and pre-test four variations of news media stories that vary by source (parent versus physician) and content (intuitive versus deliberative);
2. Examine the impact of vaccine hesitant parents' exposure to vaccine communications that vary in source (parent versus physician) and content (intuitive versus deliberative) on primary (vaccine hesitant attitudes) and secondary (vaccine intentions) outcomes; and
3. Explore which media story variation may be more effective in improving vaccination attitudes and intentions for different parental decision-making styles (deliberative versus intuitive).

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Vaccine Hesitancy
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Parent source; Behavioral: Intuitive content; Behavioral: Doctor source; Behavioral: Deliberative content

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 883
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Canada
  • Manitoba
    • Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, R2M 3Y9
      • University of Manitoba

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Parents over 18 living in Canada with a YOUNGEST child is less than 24 months.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Parents who have a YOUNGEST child older than 24 months
• A parent who is pregnant, before the first trimester is complete

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

4

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Parent source + intuitive story content	Behavioral: Parent source; Having a parent feature prominently in a news story; Behavioral: Intuitive content; News story content focuses on the consequences of not vaccinating (including vaccine preventable diseases) and the decisional regret.
Experimental: Doctor source + intuitive story content	Behavioral: Intuitive content; News story content focuses on the consequences of not vaccinating (including vaccine preventable diseases) and the decisional regret.; Behavioral: Doctor source; Having a doctor feature prominently in a news story
Experimental: Parent source + deliberative content	Behavioral: Parent source; Having a parent feature prominently in a news story; Behavioral: Deliberative content; News story content includes process of weighing the risks/benefits of vaccinating, the importance of vaccines for community protection, and concludes with a recommendation to vaccinate.
Experimental: Doctor source + deliberative content	Behavioral: Doctor source; Having a doctor feature prominently in a news story; Behavioral: Deliberative content; News story content includes process of weighing the risks/benefits of vaccinating, the importance of vaccines for community protection, and concludes with a recommendation to vaccinate.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Vaccine Hesitancy	Parent Attitudes about Childhood Vaccines (PACV). The PACV is a validated 15 question survey on vaccine hesitancy.	Change in baseline measured up to 1 day after content delivery

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Intention to Vaccinate	intention to vaccinate item using a 5 point likert scale ranging from very unlikely to vaccinate to very likely to vaccinate, and see if there is a one-response shift in participant intentions among vaccine hesitant parents.	Change in baseline measured up to 1 day after content delivery

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Manitoba
• Collaborators: Canadian Immunization Research Network
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Michelle Driedger, PhD, University of Manitoba

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Pachur T, Spaar, M. Domain-specific preferences for intuition and deliberation in decision making. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. 4:303-311, 2015.
• Opel DJ, Taylor JA, Zhou C, Catz S, Myaing M, Mangione-Smith R. The relationship between parent attitudes about childhood vaccines survey scores and future child immunization status: a validation study. JAMA Pediatr. 2013 Nov;167(11):1065-71. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.2483.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): July 9, 2018
• Primary Completion (Actual): November 9, 2018
• Study Completion (Actual): November 9, 2018

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: December 12, 2017
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: January 8, 2018
• First Posted (Actual): January 10, 2018

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): October 10, 2019
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 9, 2019
• Last Verified: October 1, 2019

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: vaccine; public health
• Other Study ID Numbers: H2016:390

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: Undecided

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No