Pretesting Spanish-language educational radio messages to promote timely and complete infant immunization in California

Abstract

California's Hispanic infants have lower immunization levels than non-Latino white infants, 53.7% versus 65.2%, respectively. Spanish-language radio is an effective mass media venue for imparting information to Latino populations. It has been demonstrated that lack of parental knowledge of infant immunization timing is associated with delayed immunization coverage. In an effort to improve Latino parent knowledge of immunization timing, two Spanish-language radio commercials were developed to be used in conjunction with community-based educational efforts. In order to gage the potential educational impact of the two commercials, they were pretested with a group of low-income Spanish-speaking Latino parents who represented members of the target population for whom the commercials were created. Both commercials were rated favorably by parents, and elicited immunization-specific responses. Although correct recall of the simplified, basic immunization schedule was low, the level of immunization response consistency and overall approval of both commercials appear to support their use as part of Latino infant immunization educational outreach in California.