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. 2020 Dec;146(6):e2020007609.
doi: 10.1542/peds.2020-007609. Epub 2020 Nov 9.

Parental Vaccine Hesitancy and Childhood Influenza Vaccination

Tammy A Santibanez  1 , Kimberly H Nguyen  2 , Stacie M Greby  3 , Allison Fisher  2 , Paul Scanlon  4 , Achal Bhatt  2 , Anup Srivastav  2   5 , James A Singleton  2
Affiliations

Parental Vaccine Hesitancy and Childhood Influenza Vaccination

Tammy A Santibanez et al. Pediatrics. 2020 Dec.

Abstract

Objectives: To quantify the prevalence of parental vaccine hesitancy (VH) in the United States and examine the association of VH with sociodemographics and childhood influenza vaccination coverage.

Methods: A 6-question VH module was included in the 2018 and 2019 National Immunization Survey-Flu, a telephone survey of households with children age 6 months to 17 years.

Results: The percentage of children having a parent reporting they were "hesitant about childhood shots" was 25.8% in 2018 and 19.5% in 2019. The prevalence of concern about the number of vaccines a child gets at one time impacting the decision to get their child vaccinated was 22.8% in 2018 and 19.1% in 2019; the prevalence of concern about serious, long-term side effects impacting the parent's decision to get their child vaccinated was 27.3% in 2018 and 21.7% in 2019. Only small differences in VH by sociodemographic variables were found, except for an 11.9 percentage point higher prevalence of "hesitant about childhood shots" and 9.9 percentage point higher prevalence of concerns about serious, long-term side effects among parents of Black compared with white children. In both seasons studied, children of parents reporting they were "hesitant about childhood shots" had 26 percentage points lower influenza vaccination coverage compared with children of parents not reporting hesitancy.

Conclusions: One in 5 children in the United States have a parent who is vaccine hesitant, and hesitancy is negatively associated with childhood influenza vaccination. Monitoring VH could help inform immunization programs as they develop and target methods to increase vaccine confidence and vaccination coverage.

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Conflict of interest statement

POTENTIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST: The authors have indicated they have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Prevalence of VH in the United States among parents of children age 6 months to 17 years, United States, 2018 and 2019, NIS-Flu. The recoding of do not know and refused responses to the 6 questions and their combined prevalence follows, ordered according to presentation in this figure: (1) grouped with nonhesitant (0.7% and 0.7%, for 2018 and 2019, respectively), (2) grouped with “standard schedule” (6.7% and 5.1%), (3) grouped with no concern (1.1% and 0.9%), (4) grouped with no concern (1.0% and 0.8%), (5) grouped with yes (1.1% and 1.0%), (6) grouped with no (1.0% and 1.0%).
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Association of self-reported hesitancy with other VH questions, United States, 2019, NIS-Flu.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
State-level parental VH and state-level influenza vaccination coverage, cshildren age 6 months to 17 years, United States, 2018–2019 Influenza Season, NIS-Flu.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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