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How Public Health Professionals View Mandatory Vaccination in Italy—A Cross-Sectional Survey

In response to the decline in child vaccination coverage and the subsequent occurrence of large vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks, in 2017 Italy introduced a new law that made ten vaccines mandatory for children aged 0–16 years. The policy change initiated an ongoing debate among the general pub...

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Autores principales: Pitini, Erica, Baccolini, Valentina, Rosso, Annalisa, Massimi, Azzurra, De Vito, Corrado, Marzuillo, Carolina, Villari, Paolo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8228801/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34205959
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines9060580
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author Pitini, Erica
Baccolini, Valentina
Rosso, Annalisa
Massimi, Azzurra
De Vito, Corrado
Marzuillo, Carolina
Villari, Paolo
author_facet Pitini, Erica
Baccolini, Valentina
Rosso, Annalisa
Massimi, Azzurra
De Vito, Corrado
Marzuillo, Carolina
Villari, Paolo
author_sort Pitini, Erica
collection PubMed
description In response to the decline in child vaccination coverage and the subsequent occurrence of large vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks, in 2017 Italy introduced a new law that made ten vaccines mandatory for children aged 0–16 years. The policy change initiated an ongoing debate among the general public, as well as in the political arena and the scientific community, over this major public health concern. Hence, we conducted a survey aimed at assessing Italian public health professionals’ attitudes towards and opinions on mandatory vaccination. A validated online questionnaire was administered to 1350 members of the Italian Society of Hygiene, Preventive Medicine and Public Health. Among the 1044 responders (response rate 77%), a large majority were in favour of the Italian mandatory vaccination law (91%) and against its repeal (74%). Nevertheless, according to our sample, maintaining a high level of vaccination coverage without the need to mandate would be preferable, and thus efforts to promote vaccine confidence and proactive vaccine uptake are still needed.
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spelling pubmed-82288012021-06-26 How Public Health Professionals View Mandatory Vaccination in Italy—A Cross-Sectional Survey Pitini, Erica Baccolini, Valentina Rosso, Annalisa Massimi, Azzurra De Vito, Corrado Marzuillo, Carolina Villari, Paolo Vaccines (Basel) Article In response to the decline in child vaccination coverage and the subsequent occurrence of large vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks, in 2017 Italy introduced a new law that made ten vaccines mandatory for children aged 0–16 years. The policy change initiated an ongoing debate among the general public, as well as in the political arena and the scientific community, over this major public health concern. Hence, we conducted a survey aimed at assessing Italian public health professionals’ attitudes towards and opinions on mandatory vaccination. A validated online questionnaire was administered to 1350 members of the Italian Society of Hygiene, Preventive Medicine and Public Health. Among the 1044 responders (response rate 77%), a large majority were in favour of the Italian mandatory vaccination law (91%) and against its repeal (74%). Nevertheless, according to our sample, maintaining a high level of vaccination coverage without the need to mandate would be preferable, and thus efforts to promote vaccine confidence and proactive vaccine uptake are still needed. MDPI 2021-06-01 /pmc/articles/PMC8228801/ /pubmed/34205959 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines9060580 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Pitini, Erica
Baccolini, Valentina
Rosso, Annalisa
Massimi, Azzurra
De Vito, Corrado
Marzuillo, Carolina
Villari, Paolo
How Public Health Professionals View Mandatory Vaccination in Italy—A Cross-Sectional Survey
title How Public Health Professionals View Mandatory Vaccination in Italy—A Cross-Sectional Survey
title_full How Public Health Professionals View Mandatory Vaccination in Italy—A Cross-Sectional Survey
title_fullStr How Public Health Professionals View Mandatory Vaccination in Italy—A Cross-Sectional Survey
title_full_unstemmed How Public Health Professionals View Mandatory Vaccination in Italy—A Cross-Sectional Survey
title_short How Public Health Professionals View Mandatory Vaccination in Italy—A Cross-Sectional Survey
title_sort how public health professionals view mandatory vaccination in italy—a cross-sectional survey
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8228801/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34205959
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/vaccines9060580
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