Influences Affecting Parental Acceptance of Rotavirus Vaccine

A Thesis submitted to The University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Medicine.Objective: To evaluate factors contributing to the rotavirus vaccine parental hesitancy. We hypothesize that the greatest cause of hesitancy is the fear of intussusception. Identifying hesitancy factors will enable physicians to address concerns and help parents make informed decisions regarding the vaccine. Study Design: A comprehensive search was done for key words on PubMed and OvidSP. MeSH terms were combined and filters were utilized to find relevant primary articles. Articles were screened based on titles, abstracts, conclusions, and full texts. Last search was completed on August 25, 2016. Three additional articles were found through other resources and searching references. A total of 32 articles supported the background and 4 articles supported the analysis. Results: This Systematic Review identified key barriers that are still causing parental rotavirus vaccine hesitancy: fear of side effects, cost of rotavirus vaccine, vaccine not included in free public programs, not protecting against all diarrhea, given in three doses, child receiving enough vaccines, vaccine is not useful, not wanting to administer a live vaccine, newness of the vaccine, narrow window of age for the vaccine, immunity achieved from acquiring the virus itself, needing to evaluate data, producing a stronger mutated virus, preventing through holistic approaches, and a perceived lack of disease threat. Conclusion: Identifying hesitancy factors enables advancements in parental acceptance of the rotavirus vaccine through increasing parental awareness of disease burden, removing rotavirus vaccine age limits, and educating parents on vaccine myths. Limitations include a narrow number of databases used and filtering for English-only articles.This item is part of the College of Medicine - Phoenix Scholarly Projects 2020 collection. For more information, contact the Phoenix Biomedical Campus Library at pbc-library@email.arizona.edu