Improving Vaccine Counseling Skills Among Pediatric, Medicine/Pediatric and Family Medicine Residents Pilot Study: Evaluation, Education, and Promotion of Vaccine Confidence Using Educational Modules and Standardized Patient Encounters

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines vaccine hesitancy (VH) as "the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines" and included it in the list of top ten threats to global health [WHO]. The coverage levels for most childhood vaccines remain high in the United States where data shows vaccination rate of >90% in 24-months-old children for Polio, MMR, Hepatitis B, and Varicella; >80% for Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis, and 79.6% for Haemophilus Influenza type B (Hib) in 2019. However, studies demonstrated an uptrend in vaccine hesitancy. One national survey performed in 2009 involving randomly selected participants revealed 54% parents expressed concern regarding vaccine safety and 11.5% refused recommended vaccines, despite 90% respondents agreed vaccines are a good way to prevent diseases. A survey of pediatricians in Connecticut reported increased parental vaccination concerns and refusals compared with 10 years ago, and more remarkably in the last five years. Although not always resulting in refusal, vaccine hesitancy also appears to contribute to delayed immunization or usage of alternative schedules.

Numerous reasons contribute to this phenomenon, including coincidental temporal association between adverse outcomes and vaccine administration, presence of vaccine mandates, poor knowledge of vaccine preventable diseases and lack of trust in public health agencies. Controversies and myths on vaccination safety are spread easily in social media and through disinformation campaigns. Ironically, the success of vaccines also contributes to VH in which effective immunization programs lead to limited exposure and knowledge of vaccine-preventable diseases, thus many parents ended up questioning their necessity. Other contributing factors include concern for safety, perceived lack of involvement in the decision-making process, lack of adequate time and resources, and religious or philosophical objections.

Research has shown that patients who receive a strong recommendation from a healthcare provider are 4-5 times more likely to be vaccinated. A study involving 20 pediatric primary care practices found that one of the most common recommended potential practice-level strategies to tackle VH is to provide training to improve vaccine counseling effectiveness and efficiency. Strikingly, all respondents of the study admitted to never having received any formal training in vaccine counseling. The study stressed the importance of training future primary care providers on how to communicate with vaccine-hesitant parents, including to residents and medical students. Pediatric residents need to be well prepared to address these issues, and have the knowledge, confidence, and competency to encourage VH parents to vaccinate their children.

The primary goal of this project is to develop and evaluate an interactive educational program, which will include online training modules and standardized patient encounters, for the pediatric, family medicine and medicine/pediatric residents that provides evidence-based information and skill-building strategies that will teach and refine vaccine counseling skills to promote vaccine uptake among vaccination-hesitant patient and/or families. Based upon the Announce-Inquire-Mirror-Secure (AIMS) framework, the program will deliver this information for vaccine counseling in general and within the context of the HPV, Influenza, MMR, and COVID-19 vaccines, which are the most commonly associated with myths and controversies. The impact of the interactive vaccine education program on vaccine uptake will be evaluated through comparison of pre- and post-intervention vaccination rates in the Beaumont residency clinics where residents provide patient care, residents' vaccine safety and vaccine hesitancy knowledge and provider behavior and communication skills on this topic during standardized patient encounters.