Communication Strategies for Increasing Childhood Vaccination Rates

Objective: To assess effective communication strategies delivered by health care providers to increase the rate of childhood vaccinations. Background: Although immunizations are lifesaving, the number of children receiving the full amount of recommended childhood vaccinations has been slowly decreasing. Design: Systematic review of published literature. Main Outcome Measures: Vaccinations rates Methods: I searched the following databases for studies that evaluated the effect of provider communication strategies on vaccination rates: CINAHL, PubMed, and Bibliographic databases. I obtained additional studies from back-searching reference lists. I included randomized control trials, cluster randomized trials, qualitative studies, controlled before and after studies, prospective cohort studies, retrospective cohort studies, interrupted time series studies, case control studies, and case reports, and those written in English. Results: In the search process, 134 citations were identified; 25 were fully reviewed, and 11 met eligibility criteria. Six were randomized trials. The other studies included prospective randomized trial, mixed methods, quantitative survey, pre-intervention post-intervention, and a cross-sectional study. All studies demonstrated that the evaluated communication interventions were associated with higher vaccination rates, to some degree. Conclusions: The evidence available from published studies suggests that various strategies, including reminder and recall messages, educational material, provider language usage, social media, and the use of a redesigned immunization card may be effective for improving vaccination rates. Additional well-designed studies are needed to further identify these individual strategies.Bachelor of Scienc