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Communicating benefits of herd immunity to parents may benefit community
Parents may be aware of herd immunity, but it may not be a primary motivator why they opt to vaccinate their children, according to study findings.
Maheen Quadri-Sheriff, MD, and colleagues of the Indiana University School of Medicine used data from Medline to examine studies that examined influences on parents’ decisions to immunize their children.
“One to six percent of parents ranked benefit to others as their primary reason to vaccinate their children, and 37% of parents ranked benefit to others as their second most important factor in decision making,” the researchers wrote.
They said more research will be needed on the best ways to communicate the overall health benefit of vaccination.
According to the researchers, qualitative studies are needed to explore how providers and public health initiatives can discuss the idea of childhood vaccination as a benefit to the community and not just the individual patient. However, they said this message must be conveyed without suggesting that parents consider the welfare of others above that of their own child.
“Our systematic review of the existing literature suggests that, though the majority of parents choose to vaccinate children for the child’s individual protection, some parents do consider benefit to others when they make vaccination decisions for their children,” Quadri-Sheriff, who is now affiliated with Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, told Infectious Diseases in Children. “As parents continue to seek more information about routine childhood immunizations, it is important that health care providers and public health officials understand how to communicate the concept of herd immunity in an appropriate and sensitive way, and this is where more research is needed.”
Pediatrics editor Lewis R. First, MD, agreed with the researchers in an accompanying blog: “How we can and must better explain and use herd immunity in our vaccine consent discussions is a take-away of this interesting article. Talking about herd immunity may not be the most common reason parents choose to immunize, but it’s well worth the shot!”
Disclosure: One researcher reported having consulted for Sanofi-Pasteur and receiving funding from Merck.
