tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
BMC Public Health
. 2024 Jul 18;24(1):1933.
doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-18648-x. The effect of adding physician recommendation in digitally-enabled outreach for COVID-19 vaccination in socially/economically disadvantaged populations
Kamal Sumar[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Lisa Blue[SUP] 2 [/SUP], Gina Fatahi[SUP] 3 [/SUP], Mehek Sumar[SUP] 4 [/SUP], Stephanie Alvarez[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Pedro Cons[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Nathalie Valencia[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Zachary Williams[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Atiq Bhatti[SUP] 5 [/SUP], Sairam Parthasarathy[SUP] 6 [/SUP], Chyke A Doubeni[SUP] 7 [/SUP]
Affiliations
Introduction: People from backgrounds that are economically/socially disadvantaged experienced disproportionately high COVID-19 death rates and had lower vaccination rates. Effective outreach strategies for increasing vaccine uptake during the pandemic are not fully known. Among patients receiving care at a Federally Qualified Health Center, we tested whether community engaged digitally-enabled outreach from a trusted clinician messenger increased COVID vaccine uptake.
Study design, setting, and participants: A 3-parallel-arm randomized controlled trial with a hybrid effectiveness-implementation design was conducted among patients ≥ 18 years old on study enrollment during 2021 with 1,650 assigned in 3:10:20 ratio; 2,328 were later selected for two subsequent implementation rounds.
Interventions: From April 13 to June 10, 2021, patients were proactively sent a text-messaging invitation to make an appointment for vaccination as part of the routine practice with a link to frequently asked questions (Arm 1, n = 150) with added personalized clinician recommendation alone (Arm 2, n = 500) or with enabled 2-way SMS messaging feature (Arm 3, n = 1,000). Further implementation used messaging addressing vaccine hesitancy (n = 1,323) or adverse reactions to vaccines (n = 1,005).
Main outcomes and measures: The primary outcome was the completion of the first SARS-Cov-2 vaccine dose determined at 14, 30 and 90 days after outreach.
Results: Of 1,650 patients in effectiveness Arms, 61% was female. Vaccination rates for Arms 1, 2, and 3, were 6% (n = 9), 5.4% (n = 27) and 3.3% (n = 33) at 14 days, and 11.5% (n = 17), 11.6% (n = 58), and 8.5% (n = 85) at 90 days, respectively, which were similar in pairwise comparisons. At 90 days, vaccination rates were similar across the two implementation rounds (3.9% vs. 3.6%) and were similar to the rate (3.3%) among patients who were not selected for intervention arms or implementation rounds (n = 8,671).
Conclusions: Digitally-enabled outreach that included SMS messaging outreach augmented with clinician recommendations did not improve COVID-19 vaccination rates.
Trial registration: This study is registered at ClinicalTrails.gov Identifier: NC-T04952376.
. 2024 Jul 18;24(1):1933.
doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-18648-x. The effect of adding physician recommendation in digitally-enabled outreach for COVID-19 vaccination in socially/economically disadvantaged populations
Kamal Sumar[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Lisa Blue[SUP] 2 [/SUP], Gina Fatahi[SUP] 3 [/SUP], Mehek Sumar[SUP] 4 [/SUP], Stephanie Alvarez[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Pedro Cons[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Nathalie Valencia[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Zachary Williams[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Atiq Bhatti[SUP] 5 [/SUP], Sairam Parthasarathy[SUP] 6 [/SUP], Chyke A Doubeni[SUP] 7 [/SUP]
Affiliations
- PMID: 39026196
- DOI: 10.1186/s12889-024-18648-x
Introduction: People from backgrounds that are economically/socially disadvantaged experienced disproportionately high COVID-19 death rates and had lower vaccination rates. Effective outreach strategies for increasing vaccine uptake during the pandemic are not fully known. Among patients receiving care at a Federally Qualified Health Center, we tested whether community engaged digitally-enabled outreach from a trusted clinician messenger increased COVID vaccine uptake.
Study design, setting, and participants: A 3-parallel-arm randomized controlled trial with a hybrid effectiveness-implementation design was conducted among patients ≥ 18 years old on study enrollment during 2021 with 1,650 assigned in 3:10:20 ratio; 2,328 were later selected for two subsequent implementation rounds.
Interventions: From April 13 to June 10, 2021, patients were proactively sent a text-messaging invitation to make an appointment for vaccination as part of the routine practice with a link to frequently asked questions (Arm 1, n = 150) with added personalized clinician recommendation alone (Arm 2, n = 500) or with enabled 2-way SMS messaging feature (Arm 3, n = 1,000). Further implementation used messaging addressing vaccine hesitancy (n = 1,323) or adverse reactions to vaccines (n = 1,005).
Main outcomes and measures: The primary outcome was the completion of the first SARS-Cov-2 vaccine dose determined at 14, 30 and 90 days after outreach.
Results: Of 1,650 patients in effectiveness Arms, 61% was female. Vaccination rates for Arms 1, 2, and 3, were 6% (n = 9), 5.4% (n = 27) and 3.3% (n = 33) at 14 days, and 11.5% (n = 17), 11.6% (n = 58), and 8.5% (n = 85) at 90 days, respectively, which were similar in pairwise comparisons. At 90 days, vaccination rates were similar across the two implementation rounds (3.9% vs. 3.6%) and were similar to the rate (3.3%) among patients who were not selected for intervention arms or implementation rounds (n = 8,671).
Conclusions: Digitally-enabled outreach that included SMS messaging outreach augmented with clinician recommendations did not improve COVID-19 vaccination rates.
Trial registration: This study is registered at ClinicalTrails.gov Identifier: NC-T04952376.