Award Date

12-15-2019

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Public Health (MPH)

Department

Environmental and Occupational Health

First Committee Member

Brian Labus

Second Committee Member

Paula Frew

Third Committee Member

Chad Cross

Fourth Committee Member

Nirmala Lekhak

Number of Pages

51

Abstract

Vaccination is considered one of the most successful public health achievements of the 20th century. However, with increasing vaccine skepticism emerging over the past decades, there is a threat to the ongoing sustainment of vaccine coverage within all US communities. This study evaluated and compared parents’ sociodemographic factors associated with childhood vaccine decisions. This study is a secondary analysis of 893 parents/guardians, age 18-55 years with child(ren) < 7 years living in the U.S.

Predictive analysis was conducted using multinomial logistic regression modeling was used to examine vaccine decisions (accept, hesitant, and refuse) in relation to parents’ sociodemographic factors. Overall, (66.6%) of parents accepted recommended vaccines, while (23.6%) hesitated, and (9.7%) refused the recommended childhood vaccines. Males were more likely than females to refuse rather than accept vaccines (OR= 1.88, 95% CI 1.03-3.43). Parents with low income were more likely to refuse compared to middle-income parents (OR= 2.40, 95% CI 1.32-4.37). However, parents with high income were less likely to refuse vaccine when compared to parents with middle income (OR= 0.59, 95% CI 0.28-1.24).

To reduce the proportion of vaccine-hesitant parents and improve coverage, interventions should be tailored to specific groups of parents to identify potential barriers, address those barriers by implementing target specific interventions and programs, and monitor them to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs.

Keywords

Childhood Vaccines; Parental sociodemographics; Vaccine Decisions

Disciplines

Biostatistics | Epidemiology | Public Health

File Format

pdf

File Size

0.800 MB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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