Interventions to improve vaccination rates among adolescents
Citation: Abdullahi LH, Kagina BM, Ndze VN, et al. Improving vaccination uptake among adolescents. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2020;(1):CD011895.
What is this? COVID-19 vaccines are becoming available and existing research on how to improve the uptake of vaccination might be useful for policy makers.
In this Cochrane review, the authors searched for comparative effectiveness studies of interventions to improve uptake of a variety of vaccinations among adolescents. They did not restrict their searches by date or language of publication and did the search in October 2018. They included 8 individually randomized trials, 4 cluster randomized trials, 3 non‐randomized trials and 1 controlled before‐after study. The outcomes included uptake of human papillomavirus (HPV) (11 studies), hepatitis B (3), and tetanus–diphtheria–acellular–pertussis (Tdap), meningococcal, HPV and influenza (3) vaccines among adolescents.
A COVID-19 Global Evaluation Coalition brief that uses evidence from this review is available here[http://www.covid19-evaluation-coalition.org/documents/VACCINES-Brief-2.pdf]
What works: Multi-component interventions that include digital components directed to parents and/or providers may improve HPV vaccination uptake among adolescents, compared to usual practice.
Health education, financial incentives and provider education with performance feedback may improve HPV vaccine uptake, compared to usual practice.
A class‐based school vaccination strategy probably leads to slightly higher HPV vaccine uptake than an age‐based school vaccination strategy.
Mandatory vaccination probably leads to a large increase in hepatitis B vaccine uptake compared to usual practice
What doesn’t work: Vaccination prompts for healthcare providers delivered by digital client health records probably make little or no difference to the number of adolescents who receive tetanus–diphtheria–pertussis, meningococcal, HPV or influenza vaccination, compared to usual practice.
What’s uncertain: The effects of combining health education and financial incentives on hepatitis B vaccine uptake are uncertain.