#286 Vaccine hesitancy in the office: What can I do?
CLINICAL QUESTION
What office-based interventions in primary care help reduce vaccine hesitancy?
BOTTOM LINE
Clinicians should explicitly recommend vaccination and focus discussion on the disease-prevention benefits to the individual more than correcting misinformation or on benefits to society. Interventions are more likely to be effective in those with neutral attitudes towards vaccination than those opposed.
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EVIDENCE
Focus on RCTs of interventions implementable in primary care.
315 participants, online, given information on disease risk [measles, mumps, and rubella
(MMR)], information correcting vaccine-autism link, or control; baseline vaccine attitude
score 4.84 (6-point scale, higher more likely to vaccinate):1
- Improvement in vaccine attitude scores:
- Disease risk: 0.25, statistically different.
- Autism risk: 0.08, not statistically different.
- Control: 0.05.
- Reanalysis2 shows biggest change among participants with “neutral” baseline vaccine attitude scores.
- No intervention improved intent to vaccinate.
- In those with least-favorable vaccine attitudes, correction of misinformation decreased intent to vaccinate from 70% (control) to 45%.
- Likelihood of vaccinating child with MMR (on a 100-point scale): 86.3 (control), 91.6
(benefits to child), 86.4 (benefits to society), 90.8 (benefits to child and society).
- Only statements including benefits to the child statistically different from control.
- Studies looked at proxy measures (example: intention to vaccinate) rather than vaccine uptake.
- No study was completed in a primary care office with a trusted healthcare provider.
- No RCTs involved COVID-19 vaccines.
- Vaccine hesitancy is a spectrum, not a binary “pro/anti.”5
- “Strong” physician recommendations are associated with higher likelihood to vaccinate.6-8
- Discussion about vaccination ideally begins during pregnancy and continues in the neonatal period.9-11
- A presumptive approach (example: “Jane is due for her vaccines today.”) is recommended over participatory (example: “Are we going to do Jane’s vaccines today?”).7,12
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I have found that in my practice, for a certain segment of the population that is skeptical of government efforts, informing them that they have already paid for the vaccine via their taxes and they will not be getting that money back from the government, so they might as well claim what is theirs, has increased uptake of flu shots, Pneumovax, etc. This is certainly anecdotal but it’s another avenue to take. You have to make it matter to your patient based on what matters to them.
I found this article useful in dealing with vaccinations