School of American and Global Studies, South Dakota State University, Box 2212, Brookings, SD, 57007, USA.
J Community Health. 2024 Aug;49(4):763-769. doi: 10.1007/s10900-024-01334-9. Epub 2024 Feb 27.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, public health institutions, particularly the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), were frequently attacked by politicians. Popular trust in these institutions declined, particularly among self-identified Republicans. Therefore, the effectiveness of public health institutions as vaccination messengers might have been weakened in the post-COVID-19 period. We conducted a survey experiment examining the effectiveness of messaging from the CDC in shaping people's attitudes toward mandatory MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccination for schoolchildren.
The experiment was embedded in a survey fielded in South Dakota, a "red state" with a population predisposed to distrust the CDC. Using registration-sampling, we received 747 responses. We used difference-in-means tests and multivariate regression to analyze the data.
We found that participants who received a message from the CDC were more likely to support MMR vaccine mandate for schoolchildren than participants who received the same prompt from a state agency. Further analyses showed that messaging from the CDC was particularly effective among Republicans.
Overall, our study showed that although the CDC was caught up in the political skirmishes during the COVID-19 pandemic, it remains an authoritative source of public health information.
Public health officials at the local and state levels should not shy away from referring to the CDC in their vaccination messaging.
在 COVID-19 大流行期间，公共卫生机构，尤其是疾病预防控制中心（CDC），经常受到政客的攻击。公众对这些机构的信任下降，尤其是自认为是共和党的人。因此，公共卫生机构作为疫苗接种信息传递者的有效性，在 COVID-19 之后可能已经减弱。我们进行了一项调查实验，研究了 CDC 的信息传递在塑造人们对儿童强制性 MMR（麻疹、腮腺炎、风疹）疫苗接种的态度方面的有效性。
该实验嵌入在南达科他州进行的一项调查中，该州是一个“红州”，民众普遍对 CDC 不信任。我们使用登记抽样，收到了 747 份回复。我们使用均值差异检验和多元回归分析数据。
我们发现，与收到来自州立机构相同提示的参与者相比，收到来自 CDC 的信息的参与者更有可能支持为学童接种 MMR 疫苗。进一步的分析表明，来自 CDC 的信息传递对共和党人特别有效。
总的来说，我们的研究表明，尽管 CDC 在 COVID-19 大流行期间陷入了政治纷争，但它仍然是公共卫生信息的权威来源。
地方和州级的公共卫生官员在疫苗接种信息传递中不应回避提及 CDC。
