Elsevier

Vaccine

Volume 34, Issue 21, 5 May 2016, Pages 2424-2429
Vaccine

Can the vaccine adverse event reporting system be used to increase vaccine acceptance and trust?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2016.03.087Get rights and content

Abstract

Vaccine refusal has an impact on public health, and the human pappillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is particularly underutilized. Research suggests that it may be difficult to change vaccine-related attitudes, and there is currently no good evidence to recommend any particular intervention strategy. One reason for vaccine hesitancy is lack of trust that vaccine harms are adequately documented and reported, yet few communication strategies have explicitly attempted to improve this trust. This study tested the possibility that data from the vaccine adverse event reporting system (VAERS) can be used to increase trust that vaccine harms are adequately researched and that potential harms are disclosed to the public, and thereby improve perceptions of vaccines. In the study, participants were randomly assigned to one of three communication interventions. All participants read the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) vaccine information statement (VIS) for the HPV vaccine. Two other groups were exposed to additional information about VAERS, either summary data or full detailed reports of serious adverse events from 2013. Results showed that the CDC's VIS alone significantly increased perceptions of vaccine benefits and decreased perceived risks. Participants who were also educated about VAERS and given summary data about the serious adverse events displayed more trust in the CDC and greater HPV vaccine acceptance relative to the VIS alone. However, exposure to the detailed VAERS reports significantly reduced trust in the CDC and vaccine acceptance. Hence, general information about the VAERS data slightly increased trust in the CDC and improved vaccine acceptance, but the specific VAERS reports negatively influenced both trust and acceptance. Implications for communicating about vaccines are discussed.

Section snippets

Participants and setting

A total of 1259 adults located in the USA participated in this study in exchange for $1 or $1.50, depending on whether they received the long or short form of the survey. Participants were recruited using Amazon's Mechanical Turk (Mturk), which is a population of adults who are willing to take surveys in exchange for a small amount of money. As of 2010, the Mturk population included over 500,000 individuals, with 39% located in the USA [16]. Research on this population has shown that it is more

Influence of interventions on vaccine acceptance and trust

Pre-measures of perceived vaccine risks and benefits indicated that 8.5% of participants reported low perceived benefits of the HPV vaccine (responded 0–50 on 100-point scale), and 31.7% reported high perceived risks (responded 50–100 on 100-point scale). This indicates that the sample had fairly positive evaluations of the vaccine's benefits, although a sizeable proportion of the sample held negative beliefs pertaining to vaccine risks.

Fig. 2 shows that in the VIS only condition 73% of

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to test an intervention that was intended to increase vaccine acceptance and trust by communicating that the CDC diligently records possible vaccine harms and disseminates this information to the public. The intervention was based on findings indicating that some individuals distrust the research and reporting about vaccine harms, and therefore we tested the possibility that open communication about VAERS would increase trust. Results showed that information about

Funding source

This research was funded by internal research funds from the University of Michigan provided to the last author.

Potential conflicts of interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest relevant to this article to disclose.

Financial Disclosure: The authors have no financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose.

Contributors’ statement

Dr Scherer conceptualized and designed the study, conducted the data analyses, drafted the initial manuscript, and approved the final manuscript as submitted.

Drs. Shaffer, Patel and Zikmund-Fisher conceptualized and designed the study, reviewed and revised the manuscript, and approved the final manuscript as submitted.

References (20)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (0)

View full text