Immunization promotion activities: are they effective in encouraging mothers to immunize their children?

Mass media communication is an important strategy for increasing parental uptake and to promote community participation when large-scale immunization activities are carried out. In Mexico, the National Vaccination Council (CONAVA) launches three immunization campaigns every year accompanied by three vaccination promotion campaigns. This study was conducted to assess whether communication activities to promote CONAVA's Second National Health Week (SNHW) were effective in providing information to mothers about the importance of immunizing their children under five years of age and in prompting them to seek immunization services. A probability sample of mothers living in the metropolitan area of Mexico City and having at least one child under five years old was selected for the study. Four outcome variables were defined as measuring the impact of the campaign: (1) mothers' knowledge about the SNHW; (2) mothers' comprehension indicating how well they understood the campaign messages (aware, partly aware and unaware); (3) mothers' motivation, i.e. whether or not they sought out immunizations for their children under the age of five and (4) mothers' opinion of how well they liked the messages. A total of 935 mothers were interviewed; 88.2% knew about the SNHW, 64.3% were aware that the campaign aimed to provide immunizations, and most held a favorable opinion about the messages. Among aware mothers, 87.5% of their children received immunizations. In this group 72.1% were prompted by the information in the campaign to seek immunizations for their children while 27.9% had to be personally invited to participate in the campaign. The latter occurred either when health workers or volunteers visited mothers in their homes or by soliciting mothers' participation as they visited or passed by immunization health posts. In the unaware mothers group, 72.7% of their children received immunizations; 62.5% of the mothers took their children because of information they received through the campaign while 37.5% had to be personally invited to immunize their children. Mothers with better socioeconomic status were more aware of the campaign, but a high percentage of them did not seek immunizations, while mothers with middle and lower socioeconomic status were motivated to immunize their children through the campaign. Promotion activities and messages communicated through the mass media were appropriate to inform and motivate mothers to seek immunization services for their children.