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Abstract
Objective This trial aimed to determine if return rates of consent forms for vaccination could be improved when Vaxcards were offered as an incentive to school children.
Setting Nineteen schools in South East Melbourne participated.
Interventions Students in the experimental arm received a pack of Vaxcards when they returned their government consent form.
Outcome measures Return of ‘yes’ consent forms for vaccination as part of a local government council vaccine programme was the primary outcome of this trial. Return rates were compared between the intervention and control schools and with historical return rates.
Results Secondary school students (N=3087) from 19 schools participated. Compared with historical returns, a small global reduction in ‘yes’ responses to consent forms of −4.21% in human papilloma virus consent ‘yes’ responses and −4.69% for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis was observed across all schools. No difference between the experimental and control groups was observed.
Conclusions Low ‘yes’ consent rates and reduction in consent rates between 2018 and 2019 for all groups are concerning. This finding highlights the need for behaviour change interventions across all groups to increase vaccine confidence. Lack of effect of incentivisation with Vaxcards in this study may have been due to the timing of receiving the cards (after the decision to vaccinate had been made, not before) and the limited intensity of the intervention. Optimising the timing and the intensity of exposure to Vaxcards could improve the outcome.
Trial registration number ACTRN12618001753246.
- paediatric infectious disease & immunisation
- public health
Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request. Data available upon request.
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
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Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request. Data available upon request.
Footnotes
Twitter @EnticottJo, @ProfHeidiLarson
Contributors DE, JE, CB: substantial contribution to the conception or design of the study, data collection analysis, interpretation of data; drafting the work or revising it critically; final approval of the version to be published; and agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. HL: substantial contribution to the conception or design of the study and interpretation of data; drafting the work or revising it critically; final approval of the version to be published; and agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests The lead author is the creator of Vaxcards that supplied the card games for evaluation in this study and this was disclosed to the participating schools and councils involved in the vaccination project. This interest will be disclosed in all subsequent research output.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research. Refer to the Methods section for further details.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.