Social Media Could Combat Vaccine Hesitancy
Providing vaccine information to pregnant women through social media and web-based platforms improves adherence to the infant vaccination schedule, according to a recent study.
Vaccine hesitant parents are known to use the internet to find information on childhood vaccinations, but few studies have assessed the efficacy of social media or web-based platforms for improving adherence.
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For their study, the researchers recruited 888 pregnant women and followed them for 200 days after delivery. Women were randomly assigned to either a website with vaccine information and interactive social media components (VSM), a website with vaccine information (VI), or usual care (UC). The researchers assessed the number of days infants spent undervaccinated as the main outcome.
Using a nonparametric rank-based analysis, the researchers found that the mean ranks for days infants spent undervaccinated were significantly lower among those in the VSM group compared with the UC group. However, there was no statistically significance differences between the VI and UC groups or the VSM and VI groups.
Overall, women in the VSM group were more likely to be up-to-date on their infants’ vaccinations compared with women in the UC group (odds ratio [OR] 1.92). The proportion of infants with up-to-date vaccinations by the end of the study was 92.5 among the VSM group, 91.3 among the VI group, and 86.6 among the UC group. However, the up-to-date status of infants was not statistically different between the VI and UC groups (OR 1.62) or between the VSM and VI groups (OR 1.19).
“Providing Web-based vaccine information with social media applications during pregnancy can positively influence parental vaccine behaviors,” the researchers concluded.
—Melissa Weiss
Reference:
Glanz JM, Wagner NM, Narwaney KJ, et al. Web-based social media intervention to increase vaccine acceptance: a randomized controlled trial [published online November 6, 2017]. Pediatrics. doi:10.1542/peds.2017-1117.