Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Bernhard-Nocht-Straße 74, Hamburg, 20359, Germany.
GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, B6 4-5, Mannheim, 68159, Germany.
BMC Public Health. 2022 Mar 16;22(1):516. doi: 10.1186/s12889-022-12725-9.
COVID-19 vaccine hesistancy is a serious policy issue in Germany as vaccinations have stagnated at low levels compared to most other European countries. In this context, we study whether and how health workers can be leveraged to promote the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
We employed an information experiment with health workers in Germany to quantify how access to information related to (i) AstraZeneca's vaccine safety, (ii) misinformation, (iii) individual health risks, and (iv) public health risks can sway health workers' recommendations for any of the following vaccines: AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech, Sinopharm, and Sputnik-V. The information experiment was conducted as a randomized controlled trial with four treatment arms and was embedded in an online survey.
Health workers reduce their willingness to recommend four out of six vaccines once they learn about different statements of European and German health authorities with respect to the safety of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Consistent with the discussion on AstraZeneca's safety focusing on possible side effects among younger women, we find that especially female health workers become less likely to recommend the majority of COVID-19 vaccines. Lastly, we show that health workers vaccine recommendations are not affected by misinformation and appeals to individual or public health.
In order to mobilize health workers in the fight against vaccine hesitancy, information campaigns need to be tailor-made for the target audience. In particular, health workers react to different types of information than the general public. As with the general public, we provide suggestive evidence that health workers require unambigious messages from drug authorities in order to support vaccination efforts. We believe that a more coordinated and coherent approach of public authorities can reduce the amount of mixed signals that health workers receive and therefore contribute to health workers engagement in the outroll of mass COVID-19 vaccination campaigns.
The trial was registered retrospectively with the repository of the Open Science Framework (OSF) under the number osf.io/qa4n2 .
与大多数其他欧洲国家相比，德国的 COVID-19 疫苗接种率一直处于较低水平，疫苗犹豫是一个严重的政策问题。在这种情况下，我们研究了医护人员是否以及如何能够被利用来推动 COVID-19 疫苗接种运动。
我们在德国的医护人员中进行了一项信息实验，以量化获取与（i）阿斯利康疫苗安全性、（ii）错误信息、（iii）个人健康风险和（iv）公共卫生风险相关的信息如何影响医护人员对以下六种疫苗的推荐：阿斯利康、强生、莫德纳、辉瑞/生物技术、国药控股和卫星五号。该信息实验是作为一个随机对照试验进行的，有四个治疗组，并嵌入到在线调查中。
医护人员一旦了解到欧洲和德国卫生当局对阿斯利康疫苗安全性的不同声明，就会降低对六种疫苗中的四种疫苗的推荐意愿。与阿斯利康安全性讨论主要集中在年轻女性可能出现的副作用一致，我们发现，特别是女性医护人员不太可能推荐大多数 COVID-19 疫苗。最后，我们表明，医护人员的疫苗推荐不受错误信息和对个人或公共健康的呼吁的影响。
为了在对抗疫苗犹豫的斗争中动员医护人员，信息宣传活动需要针对目标受众进行定制。特别是，医护人员对不同类型的信息的反应与公众不同。与公众一样，我们提供了暗示性的证据，表明医护人员需要从药物当局获得明确的信息，以支持接种工作。我们相信，公共当局采取更协调和一致的方法可以减少医护人员收到的混杂信号的数量，从而有助于医护人员参与大规模 COVID-19 疫苗接种运动。
该试验在开放科学框架（OSF）的存储库中被追溯性地注册，注册号为 osf.io/qa4n2。
