Parents’ and guardians’ views and experiences of accessing routine childhood vaccinations during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic: A mixed methods study in England
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Abstract
To explore parents’ and guardians’ views and experiences of accessing National Health Service (NHS) general practices for routine childhood vaccinations during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in England.
Design
Mixed methods approach involving an online cross-sectional survey (conducted between 19 th April and 11 th May 2020) and semi-structured telephone interviews (conducted between 27 th April and 27 th May 2020).
Participants
1252 parents and guardians (aged 16+ years) who reported living in England with a child aged 18 months or under completed the survey. Nineteen survey respondents took part in follow-up interviews.
Results
The majority of survey respondents (85.7%) considered it important for their children to receive routine vaccinations on schedule during the COVID-19 pandemic; however, several barriers to vaccination were identified. These included a lack of clarity around whether vaccination services were operating as usual, particularly amongst respondents from lower income households and those self-reporting as Black, Asian, Chinese, Mixed or Other ethnicity; difficulties in organising vaccination appointments; and fears around contracting COVID-19 while attending general practice.
Concerns about catching COVID-19 while accessing general practice were weighed against concerns about children acquiring a vaccine-preventable disease if they did not receive scheduled routine childhood vaccinations. Many parents and guardians felt their child’s risk of acquiring a vaccine-preventable disease was low as the implementation of stringent physical distancing measures (from March 23 rd 2020) meant they were not mixing with others.
Conclusion
To promote routine childhood vaccination uptake during the current COVID-19 outbreak, further waves of COVID-19 infection, and future pandemics, prompt and sustained national and general practice level communication is needed to raise awareness of vaccination service continuation and the importance of timely vaccination, and invitation-reminder systems for vaccination need to be maintained. To allay concerns about the safety of accessing general practice, practices should communicate the measures being implemented to prevent COVID-19 transmission.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.04.20186569: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:5.2 Strengths and limitations: Our recruitment strategy, using social media, achieved a high number of responses. Although geographically representative, our respondents were not overly representative in terms of household …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.04.20186569: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:5.2 Strengths and limitations: Our recruitment strategy, using social media, achieved a high number of responses. Although geographically representative, our respondents were not overly representative in terms of household income and ethnicity. This may have been reflective of using an online recruitment approach which may have biased who took part in the research. Most of our survey respondents were White (White British, White Irish or White Other) and reported relatively high annual household incomes (median household income £55,000-£64,999). As inequalities in vaccination access and uptake are found in ethnic minority and lower income groups [24–26], the findings may not capture the views and experiences of people who face the greatest barriers to vaccination.
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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