Heidelberg Institute for Global Health, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany.
Visiting Researcher, Imperial College London, London, UK.
BMC Public Health. 2024 Oct 12;24(1):2795. doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-20296-0.
The pandemic and its preventive measures disrupted daily routines and posed unforeseen obstacles for families. Users of public online forums chronicled these challenges by freely expressing their sentiments in unrestricted text-length formats. We explored a German COVID-19 forum to understand family perspectives and experiences of pandemic measures, particularly in terms of testing and vaccinating children. Our findings aim to inform future epidemic health policies.
We retrieved all 11,207 entries from a COVID-19 forum during its lifespan (June 2020 - December 2021), posted during the height of the pandemic. We classified the entries into topic clusters including general pandemic situation, testing, or vaccination using state-of-the-art text embeddings and clustering algorithms. The clusters were selected based on the research's aims and analysed qualitatively using a health policy triangle framework.
Users generally appreciated pandemic public health safety measures for everyone's protection, yet voiced concerns about inconsistent policies and disproportional disadvantages for children compared to other societal groups, like the elderly. Non-compliers were overwhelmingly regarded with skepticism and critiqued. Users found COVID-19 (exit) strategies and information about the benefits of vaccination unclear. This created hurdles for parents and caregivers in navigating their children's school and social life. Users endorsed vaccinating children mainly for "normalising" children's lives rather than for their physical health benefits. Some users suggested prioritising teachers and early childhood educators on the vaccination eligibility list to speed up a return to "normality".
During pandemics, governments should prioritize addressing the societal and mental health needs of children by implementing participatory and family-oriented public health measures for schools and kindergartens. Clear communication coupled with consistent design and implementation of safety measures and regulations, would be crucial for building trust in the general population and for ensuring compliance regarding testing and vaccination. Communicating the benefits and risks of vaccinating children is of paramount importance for informed decision-making among parents. In future epidemics, computer-aided analysis of large online qualitative data would offer valuable insights into public sentiments and concerns, enabling proactive and adaptive epidemic responses.
疫情及其预防措施打乱了日常生活节奏，给家庭带来了意想不到的障碍。公共在线论坛的用户以自由表达的方式，在不受限制的文本长度格式中记录了这些挑战。我们探索了一个德国 COVID-19 论坛，以了解家庭对疫情措施的看法和经验，特别是在儿童检测和接种疫苗方面。我们的研究结果旨在为未来的疫情卫生政策提供信息。
我们检索了该 COVID-19 论坛在疫情高峰期（2020 年 6 月至 2021 年 12 月）的全部 11207 条帖子，这些帖子是在疫情期间发布的。我们使用最先进的文本嵌入和聚类算法将这些帖子分类为主题集群，包括一般疫情情况、检测或接种疫苗。这些集群是根据研究目的选择的，并使用健康政策三角框架进行定性分析。
用户普遍赞赏疫情期间为保护所有人而采取的公共卫生安全措施，但对政策不一致以及与老年人等其他社会群体相比，儿童面临不成比例的劣势表示担忧。不遵守规定的人则被普遍持怀疑态度和批评。用户认为 COVID-19（退出）策略和接种疫苗的好处信息不明确。这给父母和照顾者在安排子女的学校和社交生活方面带来了障碍。用户赞成为儿童接种疫苗，主要是为了“使儿童的生活正常化”，而不是为了他们的身体健康获益。一些用户建议将教师和幼儿教育工作者列入接种资格名单，以加快恢复“正常”。
在大流行期间，政府应通过为学校和幼儿园制定参与性和以家庭为导向的公共卫生措施，优先满足儿童的社会和心理健康需求。清晰的沟通以及安全措施和法规的一致性设计和实施对于在普通民众中建立信任和确保检测和接种疫苗的合规性至关重要。就接种儿童的益处和风险进行沟通对于父母做出明智决策至关重要。在未来的疫情中，计算机辅助分析大型在线定性数据将为了解公众情绪和关注点提供有价值的见解，从而实现积极主动和适应性的疫情应对。
