A preliminary prospective study: Could the labeling of a health-care message on a consumer product limit forgetfulness in parents confronted with immunization?

Background: Parental hesitancy in immunization is an emerging and concerning problem owing to the serious consequences of a lack of vaccination. Few tools are available to combat this phenomenon.

Aims: To evaluate the interest of parents in recording the vaccine schedule on a common consumer product as a solution to prevent immunization oversight.

Method: We conducted a preliminary prospective and monocentric study, in a parental population, using surveys to evaluate interest in this solution, and to define the sociodemographic characteristics of our population. Our population was clustered into three groups: against immunization, hesitant/negligent, and pro-immunization. This solution was evaluated using a univariate model between fearful and confident populations in respect of immunization, associated with a descriptive analysis of the population against immunization.

Results: Of 825 surveys distributed, 709 were analyzed. There were 47 parents against immunization (6.6%), 284 hesitant/negligent parents (40%), and 378 pro-immunization parents (53.3%). We showed that the hesitant/negligent population reported more difficulties in remembering the immunization schedule (P<0.001; OR=0.36; 95% CI [0.25-0.51]), and was interested in discussions on immunization (P<0.001; OR=0.41; 95% CI [0.29-0.58]). This population prone to oversight was interested in the labeling of an everyday consumer product with the immunization schedule (P=0.03; OR=0.68; 95% CI [1.02-2.11]) to limit the number of missed injections.

Conclusion: There is no single or perfect solution to combat the current anti-immunization problem, although communication through everyday consumer products seems to be an interesting tool for raising parental awareness of the importance of immunization. Further studies are required to evaluate the effectiveness of this tool.