Social media as an effective provider of quality assured and factual information to increase vaccine rates – A systematic review

Abstract

Background: Vaccination programs are one among the most important reasons people can live longer and healthier, avoiding diseases like measles, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and influenza from becoming fatal epidemics. Many people, including 20 million infants each year, have insufficient access to vaccines. There is a need to distribute information about the importance of following the vaccination programs. This review examines whether it is possible to use already established channels such as social media for this purpose. <p>

<p>Objective: The objective of this review is to explore the potential usage of social media and its scalability and robustness in providing good and factual information to people whether to receive vaccination for themselves or making up their mind on behalf of their children. <p>

<p>Methodology: This review is planned and described in a protocol registered in Prospero (CRD42022304229) and conducted in accordance with the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Searches for peer-reviewed journal articles were conducted in Medline, Embase, PsycInfo, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), and Google Scholar. Only RCTs were eligible for inclusion, public in general were eligible as the population. Interventions included were defined as platforms that provide the opportunity to share information between the provider of information and the receiver of the information, also described as a two-way communication. The outcomes from the included studies were days unvaccinated, vaccine acceptance, or uptake of vaccines compared to baseline. These were compared to traditional interventions and teaching methods, described as control group. The studies were assessed for risk of bias by using the Cochrane risk of bias tool for RCTs. The data were summarized and presented narratively in text and tables. To visualize the effect of the intervention, an effect direction plot was carried out by using The Cochrane Handbook guidance on alternative synthesis methods and grading. Lastly, we evaluated the certainty of the body of evidence by using the GRADE approach. <p>

<p>Results: Nine studies described in 11 articles met the inclusion criteria. Most of the studies were conducted in the USA (n=7). The remaining studies (n=4) were conducted in China, Jordan, Australia, and Israel. Three studies were conducted at Kaisers Permanente Colorado and were based on the three different outcomes discussed in this review. The authors from these studies concluded that internet-based platforms with social media components significantly improved mothers’ attitudes towards vaccines, this intervention also positively influenced parental vaccine behaviors during pregnancy and significantly increased the influenza vaccine rates. However, the effect direction plot from the included articles in this review, shows that there is reason to believe that in a true setting, the result in each outcome domain would consist of an equal number of positive and negative results due to the interventions’ effect on uptake of vaccines and vaccine acceptance. The confidence in the certainty of evidence varies from high to low. Results were downgraded due to high or uncertain risk of bias in the included studies. <p>

<p>Conclusion: It is possible to say that social media is useful for reaching out to the public to communicate the importance of vaccination. This is because most of the studies in this review favor the intervention. However, this review shows that there is a basis for gathering experience to optimize the use of social media to increase vaccination rates. Social media can work as an instrument that potentially is able to transmit information to increase the vaccination rate in a population. But we cannot exclusively use social media as the only tool, since there are complex structures that work together when it comes to vaccine acceptance. Social media as a tool assumes that authorized personnel keep a close eye on and moderate the discussions.