Merely asking sufferers to get the flu vaccine, and mixing it with useful video and print messages, is sufficient to persuade many who go to emergency departments to roll up their sleeves, in line with a brand new examine led by UC San Francisco.
Researchers discovered a 32% vaccine uptake in sufferers who had been requested in the event that they’d be fascinated about getting the flu shot and informed their well being suppliers would learn. They noticed a 41% uptake for individuals who had been requested about receiving a flu shot and acquired a pamphlet, watched a three-minute video of a doctor with an analogous ethnic background discussing the vaccine and had been informed about the advantages of the vaccine.
The examine revealed March 26, 2024 in NEJM Proof.
The researchers say such a systematic method may result in extra underserved individuals receiving vaccines, particularly these whose major well being care happens in emergency departments.
Flu may be deadly
Flu results in appreciable mortality in the US — annual dying charges are usually within the tens of hundreds, particularly when mixed with pneumonia — however vaccination is especially low amongst underserved populations and people whose major care happens in emergency departments. Such sufferers typically face common vaccine hesitancy or a scarcity of alternatives for the flu shot.
“This analysis arose from our need to handle the well being disparities that we see each day in our emergency division, particularly amongst homeless individuals, the uninsured and immigrant populations,” stated first creator, Robert M. Rodriguez, MD, a professor of Emergency Drugs with the UCSF Faculty of Drugs.
Investigators within the examine created flu vaccine messaging — together with a short video, flyer and a scripted well being supplier query, “Would you be keen to just accept the influenza vaccine?” — and assessed their effectiveness amongst practically 800 sufferers in 5 cities: San Francisco, Houston, Philadelphia, Seattle and Durham, North Carolina. The median age was 46. Greater than half the members within the trial had been Black or Latino, 16 % lacked medical health insurance, practically a 3rd had no major care and 9% had been homeless or dwelling in severely insufficient housing. These demographic traits are just like affected person populations typically served by city emergency departments.
The researchers designed the medical trial to span a single flu season between Oct. 2022 and Feb. 2023.
“Total, our examine provides to the rising physique of information exhibiting that quite a few vital public well being interventions can and needs to be delivered to underserved populations in emergency departments,” stated Rodriguez, whose earlier analysis has discovered the effectiveness of delivering related COVID-19 vaccine messaging to emergency division sufferers.
