A Video-Based Intervention to Assess COVID-19 and Influenza Vaccine Acceptability in a Pediatric Emergency Department.

INTRODUCTION

Children have unacceptably low rates of COVID-19 and influenza vaccine uptake. Given limited access to primary care for many children, pediatric emergency departments (PEDs) are novel settings for COVID-19 and influenza vaccine administration.

OBJECTIVE

Our study tested whether viewing a brief educational video would be associated with an increase in COVID-19 and influenza vaccine readiness among adult caregivers for themselves and their children.

METHODS

This study consisted of a convenience sample of 339 caregivers accompanying pediatric patients to a university-based PED from 1/13/2022 to 5/11/2022. Participants completed a pre-intervention survey through iPad that gathered information concerning demographics, COVID-19 beliefs, and vaccine attitudes and readiness. Participants watched a novel 3-minute educational video created by the study team addressing risks and benefits of vaccine-preventable illnesses and immunizations. Information in the video was delivered by local medical professionals and tailored to our community. Participants were then resurveyed with only the questions about vaccine attitudes and vaccine readiness. Pre-intervention/post-intervention attitude changes were assessed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test.

RESULTS

Participants were 69% Hispanic and 16% Native American, with a median age of 34 years; 30% resided in rural areas. Post-intervention, COVID-19 vaccine acceptability as reported by caregivers increased on a 5-point agreement scale for both themselves ( P =0.0017) and their children ( P =0.0038). Participants were also more likely to be willing to talk to a pediatric emergency medicine doctor about influenza vaccine administration for their children after the intervention ( P =0.012).

CONCLUSIONS

A brief video-based intervention featuring locally relevant content in a PED targeted at caregivers was associated with improvement in some measures of vaccine readiness as reported by caregivers for both themselves and their children. Similar interventions could be modeled specifically for individual community characteristics and combined with vaccine administration to substantially impact morbidity and mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases.