A Webinar to Improve Parental COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy

INTRODUCTION: COVID-19 is a deadly worldwide pandemic and has led to rapid vaccine development. Vaccinating children is a key step to ending the pandemic. METHOD: This project used a pretest-posttest design to determine if a 1-hr webinar improved parental COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. The webinar was streamed live and later posted to YouTube. Parental vaccine hesitancy was measured by an adapted version of the Parental Attitudes about Childhood Vaccine survey for COVID-19 vaccines. Parental Attitudes about Childhood Vaccine data were collected during the live session and from YouTube for 4 weeks after the original webinar air date. RESULTS: After calculating a Wilcoxon signed rank test to measure the change of vaccine hesitancy before (median, 40.00) and after (median, 28.50) the webinar, there was a statistically significant difference (z = 0.003, p = .05). DISCUSSION: The webinar demonstrated improved vaccine hesitancy and provided scientifically based vaccine information to parents.