Faculty of Nursing, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Alberta Health Services, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Department of Medicine, Division of Preventive Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Public Health. 2021 May;194:170-175. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2021.02.034. Epub 2021 May 2.
Childhood immunization coverage has been shown to be greatly impacted by parental forgetfulness regarding immunizations and appointments. Evidence supports the use of reminders and recalls to overcome this barrier, which remind parents about upcoming immunization appointments and inform them once their child is overdue for an immunization. In this study, we sought to identify reminder/recall strategies used throughout a large Canadian province and determine the perceived strengths, weaknesses and areas of improvement of existing strategies.
An environmental scan was performed in 2018 in two phases: (1) interviews with public health leaders from the five zones of Alberta and (2) an online survey of public health centres across the province. Data analysis occurred in 2018 and 2019.
Commonly reported strengths of reminders and recalls included their ability to increase appointment attendance and remind parents about immunizations, respectively. A major identified weakness was their time-consuming/resource-intensive nature. Many participants believed reminder/recalls could be improved by modernizing delivery methods. Educational information or strategies to overcome language barriers were rarely incorporated into reminder/recall systems.
There was support for incorporating text messaging and automation into reminder/recall systems while encouraging continued exploration of novel reminder/recall delivery methods. Tailoring reminder/recalls to the needs and preferences of target populations can maximize the effectiveness of these systems. This includes modernizing methods of delivery, addressing language barriers, providing educational information, and allotting some degree of flexibility to local level management of reminder/recalls.
父母容易忘记疫苗接种和预约时间，这会极大地影响儿童免疫接种的覆盖率。有证据表明，使用提醒和召回措施可以克服这一障碍，这些措施可以提醒家长即将进行的疫苗接种预约，并在儿童疫苗接种逾期时通知他们。在这项研究中，我们试图确定在加拿大一个大省中使用的提醒/召回策略，并确定现有策略的优势、劣势和改进领域。
2018 年进行了环境扫描，分为两个阶段：（1）对艾伯塔省五个区域的公共卫生领导人进行访谈；（2）对全省的公共卫生中心进行在线调查。数据分析于 2018 年和 2019 年进行。
普遍报告的提醒和召回策略的优势包括它们能够增加预约就诊率和提醒父母接种疫苗。一个主要的弱点是它们耗时且资源密集。许多参与者认为，通过现代化的交付方式可以改进提醒/召回。提醒/召回系统很少纳入教育信息或克服语言障碍的策略。
支持在提醒/召回系统中纳入短信和自动化，同时鼓励继续探索新的提醒/召回交付方式。根据目标人群的需求和偏好来定制提醒/召回，可以最大限度地提高这些系统的有效性。这包括使交付方法现代化、解决语言障碍、提供教育信息，并为提醒/召回的地方管理分配一定程度的灵活性。
