Say it right: measuring the impact of different communication strategies on the decision to get vaccinated

BACKGROUND: Vaccine hesitancy is a concerning menace to the control of vaccine-preventable diseases. Effective health communication could promote an overall understanding of the importance, risks, and benefits of vaccination and reduce vaccine hesitancy. METHODS: In this survey, four fictitious newspaper articles addressing an emerging bogus disease and its vaccine were randomly assigned to participants. The first version focused on information about the disease; the second was akin to the first, including a case description and image. The third version focused on vaccine safety/efficacy; the fourth version was like the third, including a case description and image. After reading a single version of the article, participants responded if they would take the vaccine and if they would vaccinate their children. We used chi-squared tests for comparisons and investigated interactions with vaccine-hesitant attitudes. RESULTS: We included 5233 participants between August/2021 and January/2022; 790 were caregivers of a child ≤ 5 years old, and 15% had prior vaccine hesitancy. Although most declared intention to take the vaccine, the percentage was highest among those exposed to the newspaper article focusing on the vaccine safety/efficacy with the case description and picture (91%; 95% confidence interval 89–92%), and lowest among participants exposed to the article focusing on the disease with no case description (84%; 95% confidence interval 82–86%). Similar trends were observed in the intention of offspring vaccination. We found evidence of effect modification by vaccine-hesitant attitudes, with a higher impact of communication focusing on vaccine safety/efficacy compared to that focusing on disease characteristics among hesitant participants. CONCLUSION: Communication strategies focusing on different aspects of the disease-vaccine duet may impact vaccine hesitancy, and storytelling/emotive imagery descriptions may improve risk perception and vaccine uptake. Moreover, the effect of message framing strategies may differ according to previous vaccine hesitant attitudes.