Education, Healthy Ageing and Vaccine Literacy

IMPORTANCE AND OBJECTIVE: The Covid pandemic is a timely opportunity to try to broaden our understanding of the links between education and health literacy and explore the vaccine-decision process with a view to identifying interventions that will positively influence vaccine uptake. EVIDENCE: Health and vaccine literacy encompass people’s knowledge, motivation, and competence to access, understand, appraise and apply health information in order to make judgements and take decisions in everyday life concerning health care, disease prevention and health promotion. FINDINGS: Appropriate vaccine communication, which depends greatly on personal and contextual determinants, as well as on societal and environmental circumstances, is essential to reassure people about vaccine efficacy, safety, and possible side effects. However, vaccine confidence is not solely a question of trust in the vaccine’s efficacy, safety. and individual protective benefit of vaccination. It also encompasses the mechanism(s) of vaccine activity, immunization schedules, organization and trust in the healthcare system that promotes and delivers the vaccines, and at what costs. When healthcare professionals as science brokers of vaccine knowledge attempt to increase vaccine knowledge and confidence, they must adjust their communication to the educational or health literacy level of their intended audience. Even if their messages are apparently clear and simple, they absolutely need to verify that they are properly understood. RELEVANCE: Specific vaccine communication training appears essential to increase vaccine communication skills among healthcare providers. Moreover, further randomized controlled studies are warranted to improve vaccine empowerment among different populations, from a variety of educational backgrounds.