Drivers of vaccine hesitancy among vulnerable populations in India: a cross-sectional multi-state study

Frontiers in Public Health

Public Health

Raghunathan Narayanan¹  Nitish Kumar Venkatesan¹  Aditya Pangaria¹  Prerak Shah¹  Meghna Singh¹  Shiv Kumar¹  Abdul Latheef Perne¹  Parthasarathy Krishnamurthy²  Syama B. Syam³  Angela Chaudhuri³  Kallana Gowda³  Michael S. Mulvey⁴ 

[1] Catalyst Management Services, Bengaluru, India;Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, C. T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston, Houston, TX, United States;Swasti, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India;Telfer School of Management, LIFE Research Institute, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada;

关键词: vaccine hesitancy;    vulnerable populations;    fear of vaccination;    COVID-19;    frontline workers;    factor analysis;    latent class analysis;    multi-level model;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpubh.2023.1177634

 received in 2023-03-04, accepted in 2023-08-28,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

ObjectivesIndia’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign engaged frontline workers (FLWs) to encourage vaccination among vulnerable segments of society. The FLWs report encountering a variety of barriers to vaccination and are often unsuccessful despite multiple visits to the same person. This cross-sectional study aims to pinpoint which of these barriers drive vaccine hesitancy among these segments, to help streamline vaccine communication, including FLW training, to better safeguard the population.MethodsTrained field enumerators contacted 893 individuals from five states across India and collected self-reported assessments of fifteen vaccination barriers (identified through discussions with FLWs), current vaccination status and future vaccination intentions, and covariates (demographics/comorbidities). Factor analysis of the fifteen barriers yielded two factors, one relating to fear of vaccine adverse effects and a second focused on peripheral concerns regarding the vaccine. The covariates significantly associated with current vaccination status were combined under a latent class regime to yield three cluster types (health access, financial strength, and demographics). The primary analysis examined the effect of the two barrier factors, the covariate clusters, and comorbidity, on current vaccination status and future vaccine intentions.ResultsFear of vaccine adverse effects was the primary driver of vaccine hesitancy; peripheral concerns frequently mentioned by the FLWs had no impact. Although cluster membership and the presence of comorbidities predicted vaccine uptake, neither of them materially altered the effect of fear of vaccine adverse effects with the following exception: fear of adverse effects was not associated with vaccination status among young Muslim men.ConclusionSubject to limitations, these results indicate that interventions to decrease vaccine hesitancy should focus primarily on fear associated with vaccines rather than spend resources trying to address peripheral concerns.

【 授权许可】

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Copyright © 2023 Krishnamurthy, Mulvey, Gowda, Singh, Venkatesan, Syam, Shah, Kumar, Chaudhuri, Narayanan, Perne and Pangaria.