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A Message for Your Obstetrical Colleagues: What You Say About Vaccines During Pregnancy Matters :

August 21, 2017

The number of families who are vaccine-hesitant seem to be growing despite the valiant efforts of so many of us to advocate and educate on the benefits of immunization.

 

 

The number of families who are vaccine-hesitant seem to be growing despite the valiant efforts of so many of us to advocate and educate on the benefits of immunization. One of the reasons for this vaccine hesitancy, as determined in a new study being released this week by Veerasingam et al. (10.1542/peds.2016-3727) may be due to information pregnant mothers-to-be receive about vaccines. The authors report on what information almost 7000 pregnant women in New Zealand received (in terms of it being encouraging or discouraging) during their pregnancy and then looked at the immunization record of the infants born to these mothers.  The results indicate that while almost 40% of women received encouraging vaccine information from their obstetricians, a quarter of women received both discouraging only or a mixed set of messages that came from health professionals but especially from family and friends. Sadly almost 40% of women received no information whatsoever on vaccines.  When the information was discouraging or mixed, there was a significant decline in infants immunized on time whereas if the information was encouraging, there was no association with timeliness of vaccines.  If you haven’t discussed what your obstetrical colleagues say to their patients about vaccines, you will want to after reading this study—as well as perhaps encourage them to have strategies to counter the discouraging information these women might be hearing from friends and families.  Your obstetrical colleagues may find the information contained in this study to be a shot in the arm for reminding them of the important role they play in helping insure that vaccines are given to babies on time and on schedule.

 

 

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