Caregivers of childhood cancer survivors express hesitancy on COVID vaccination
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Many caregivers expressed hesitancy to vaccinate themselves and their children who had cancer against COVID-19, according to study results published in Pediatric Blood & Cancer.
“Clearly these are difficult decisions being made at the level of the individual child, and we should not assume that vaccine hesitancy among parents of children with cancer represents a general opposition to COVID-19 vaccination,” Kyle M. Walsh, PhD, associate professor in the department of neurosurgery, and director of the division of neuro-epidemiology at Duke University Medical Center, told Healio. “These parents are well-informed on risk/benefit profiles and many await new data from ongoing vaccine registries and longer-term outcomes data.”
Rationale
COVID-19 vaccination uptake continues to increase in the U.S., according to study background. However, vaccine uptake among certain populations remains low and vaccine acceptability among caregivers of childhood cancer survivors has not been well-studied.
“Many individuals expressed excitement at the prospect of a vaccine being developed in short order,” Walsh said. “We followed up with these families to explore their willingness to vaccinate their children against COVID-19 because this population is heavily engaged with the health care system and may have different perspectives than those of parents with children who do not have medical comorbidities.”
Methodology
Walsh and colleagues surveyed parents of childhood cancer survivors from 130 families between Feb. 25 and April 13, 2021, about how COVID-19 impacted their family from an economic and lifestyle perspective.
Researchers assessed the willingness or hesitancy of caregivers to receive COVID-19 vaccination for themselves, as well as for their children who had cancer.
The childhood cancer survivors had a mean age of 15 years at the time of the survey, with a mean age at cancer diagnosis of 4.3 years and mean time from cancer diagnosis to survey completion of 10 years.
Key findings
Results showed 21% of caregivers expressed hesitancy to receive the vaccine themselves and 29% expressed hesitancy to vaccinate their children who had cancer.
Caregivers who indicated they had confidence in the federal government’s COVID-19 response had a sixfold higher likelihood of expressing willingness to self-vaccinate (P < .001) and a threefold higher willingness to vaccinate their childhood cancer survivor (P = .011).
“We had anticipated that prior participation in a therapeutic clinical trial for a child’s cancer treatment would also be associated with greater willingness to vaccinate children with a vaccine currently given under emergency use authorization from the FDA,” Walsh said. “However, we did not observe any relationship between prior clinical trial participation and willingness to vaccinate their cancer survivor.”
Implications
“Vaccine hesitancy was strongly associated with having low confidence in the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and vaccine willingness was associated with receiving COVID-19 information primarily from medical providers,” Walsh said. “This suggests that oncology care teams are a trusted resource that can engage with hesitant families and provide new COVID-19-related data as it emerges to assist in vaccine decision-making.”
For more information:
Kyle M. Walsh, PhD, can be reached at Duke University Medical Center, 571 Research Drive (MSRB-1), Room 421A, DUMC Box 3050, Durham, NC 27710; email: kyle.walsh@duke.edu.
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