Parents’ knowledge, attitude and practice towards children’s vaccination in Lebanon: role of the parent-physician communication

BACKGROUND: One of the most effective public health interventions in the world is immunization. However, some parents doubt its usefulness and safety. Many factors influence their decision to vaccinate, including their sociodemographic characteristics, their trust in the public health system, the parent-physician relationship, their level of knowledge and their attitudes towards vaccination. Our objective was to determine the factors, especially the parent-physician communication, associated with parental knowledge, attitudes and practices of their children’s vaccination. METHODS: Three thousand five hundred parents (father, mother or both) of children aged between 1 month and 15 years were approached by a trained personnel who performed the data collection through personal interviews (February–April 2019). RESULTS: The response rate was 79.5%. The results of the multivariable analysis showed that a better patient-physician communication was significantly associated with higher knowledge, better attitude and practice. Better knowledge was significantly associated with better attitude, whereas better knowledge and attitude were significantly associated with better practice. CONCLUSION: Our study shows the importance of good physician-patient communication in improving knowledge, attitude and practice of parents towards their children’s vaccination.