A Select Bibliography of Actions to Promote Vaccine Literacy: A Resource for Health Communication

Vaccination as a social practice: towards a definition of personal, community, population, and organizational vaccine literacy

BACKGROUND

A comprehensive and agreed-upon definition of vaccine literacy (VL) could support the understanding of vaccination and help policy-makers and individuals make informed decisions about vaccines.

METHODS

To shed some light on this debate and provide clarity, a scoping review was conducted to collect, summarize, and analyse available definitions of VL. Based on the findings of the scoping review, a new and comprehensive definition was proposed by a panel of experts.

RESULTS

Fifty-three articles were included, and two of them appeared to be the milestones around which the other definitions were grouped. The new definition proposed by the panel of experts included not only the personal perspective, but also the community, population, and organizational perspectives. Moreover, due to the increasing complexity of the social context with respect to the ability to navigate, understand, and use information and services, the definition of organizational vaccine literacy and the attributes of a vaccine literate healthcare organization have been proposed.

CONCLUSION

The new definition can contribute to the overall paradigm of health literacy and its distinct component of vaccine literacy, possibly improving the implementation of public health strategies to allow vaccination to be understood as a social practice by the entire community. This study describes the conceptual foundations, the competencies, and the civic orientation to be considered when developing measurement tools devoted to assessing VL at the different levels and in different contexts.

The mediating role of product judgment and country of origin effect on health literacy and behavioral intention: A study on COVID-19 vaccines perception of Turkish consumers

This study is conducted on people in Turkey who had at least one dose of vaccination and it evaluates their differences in attitude in terms of health literacy, product judgment, the country of origin, intention to recommend and motivation to boycott. The 393 vaccine consumers were selected through convenient sampling and the data was collected through online questionnaires. The data was later analyzed by SPSS and AMOS. Normality, reliability tests and frequency analysis were conducted on the data. Afterward, a correlation was calculated using factor loadings to determine the relationship between the variables. The last was conducting the PATH analysis. Some consumers are prejudiced toward COVID-19 vaccines due to perceived distrust, hesitation, and lack of product information. Determining the prejudices of consumers, underlying causes and making inferences will provide more useful information on COVID-19 vaccines to health institutions, vaccine manufacturers, consumers and other organizations.

COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among low-income, racially and ethnically diverse US parents

OBJECTIVE

Examine factors impacting U.S. parents' intention to vaccinate their children against COVID-19.

METHODS

Data were collected February-May 2021 from parents living in six geographically diverse locations. The COVID-19 Exposure and Family Impact Survey assessed perceived susceptibility and severity to adverse outcomes from the pandemic. Semi-structured interviews assessed perceptions about benefits and risks of vaccinating children.

RESULTS

Fifty parents of 106 children (newborn-17 years) were included; half were Spanish-speaking and half English-speaking. 62% were hesitant about vaccinating their children against COVID-19. Efficacy and safety were the main themes that emerged: some parents perceived them as benefits while others perceived them as risks to vaccination. Parent hesitancy often relied on social media, and was influenced by narrative accounts of vaccination experiences. Many cited the lower risk of negative outcomes from COVID-19 among children, when compared with adults. Some also cited inaccurate and constantly changing information about COVID-19 vaccines.

CONCLUSION

Main drivers of parent hesitancy regarding child COVID-19 vaccination include perceived safety and efficacy of the vaccines and lower severity of illness in children.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Many vaccine-hesitant parents may be open to vaccination in the future and welcome additional discussion and data.