New parents hesitant to vaccines do not respond to web-based vaccine messages

According to a randomized clinical trial, personalized web-based messages that provided new parents with information about vaccines did not change their attitude towards vaccines or have a positive impact on infant vaccination.

Jason M. Shine, PhD, a senior researcher at the Kaiser Permanente Colorado Institute for Health Research, and colleagues enrolled 824 participants in three separate arms of the study, including 276 in a web-based intervention called Vaccines and Your Baby (VAYB) “which provided new parents vaccine information messages tailored to vaccine beliefs and values, ”they wrote. They enrolled 274 participants in a non-personalized version of the same invention (UT) and 274 to receive usual care (UC).

The mean age of the women during surgery was 32 years, with 14.3% hesitant about the vaccine at the start of the study. The rates of children who were up to date on vaccinations at the age of 200 days in all groups were 91.44%, 92.86% and 92.31%, respectively.

The authors reported that children in the VAYB group were no more likely to be out of date than those in the UC group (OR = 0.89; 95% CI, 0.45-1.76), nor were they more likely than those in the UC group. UT group (OR = 0.82; 95% CI, 0.42-1.63). The probabilities between UC and UT groups also did not differ (OR = 1.08; 95% CI, 0.54-2.18).

Jason M. Glanz

“Reducing vaccination problems and changing vaccination behavior is difficult,” Glanz told Healio. “This randomized controlled trial showed that tailored online messaging did not have a measurable impact on vaccine acceptance among new parents.”

The authors also assessed two secondary outcomes: the first analyzed the completion of MMR and varicella vaccines with at least 489 days of follow-up, while the second was a repeat evaluation of the primary study but with the exclusion of vaccination against hepatitis B.

Those in the VAYB group did not show a significant difference from those in the UC group, when comparing completion rates for MMR and chickenpox (OR = 1.18; 95% CI, 0.49-2.84; OR = 1, 06; 95% CI, 0.41-2.74). When comparing the two groups for vaccination adherence excluding HBV, no significant difference was found (OR = 0.94; 95% CI, 0.47-1.88).

“For parents, it’s important to point out that their pediatrician remains the most important source of vaccine information,” Glanz said. “Online information is highly variable and parents should only access reliable sources of vaccine information, such as AAP, CDC, NIH, state health departments.”

Glanz said vaccination rates continued to decline during the COVID-19 pandemic because some are nervous about going to doctors’ offices for fear of getting infected.

“This is troubling for a variety of reasons,” he said. “It is therefore extremely important to continue to emphasize the importance of vaccinations, address parental concerns, maintain confidence and encourage timely vaccination.”