Despite our most valiant efforts, many families are vaccine hesitant. Still, we continue to try to educate and inform families about the importance of vaccines the number one method of reducing disease burden in this country over the past century. Yet, some families still want to opt out, often choosing philosophical or religious pathways to claim exemption. How do we address this? Fortunately investigators continue to try innovations in how we educate families about vaccines so we can work collaboratively to get children vaccinated. One such innovation is discussed this week by Glanz et al. (10.1542/peds.2017-1117) who share the results of a three-arm randomized controlled trial involving pregnant women. The more than 1000 women recruited for this study were randomized to (1) a website with vaccine information and social media applications or (2) a website with vaccine information only or (3) usual care.
Infants, once born, were then followed to age 200 days to determine their vaccination status as up to date or not. So, which arm or arms of this trial did better when it comes to vaccination status? To answer that, we’ll point you to reading the study but inject the fact that there may be value in considering creating a website with vaccine information and social media applications for those in your practice, based on the interesting findings found in this study. Check out this study and see what we mean.
