JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Vaccines are one of the most important achievements of modern medicine. However, their acceptance is only partial, with vaccine hesitancy and refusal representing a major health threat. Influenza vaccines have a low compliance since repeated, annual vaccination is required. Moreover, they are especially significant in stimulating discussions. Social media is currently a significant source of health and medical information. Therefore, elucidating the association between social media engagement and influenza vaccination is important, and maybe applicable to other vaccines, including against COVID-19.

Objective:

The main objective of this research is to characterize profiles of social media engagement regarding influenza vaccine and its association with knowledge and compliance in order to support improvement of future web-based vaccination campaigns.

Methods:

A web-link to an online survey, in Hebrew, has been disseminated over social media and messaging platforms. The answers were collected during April 2020. Anonymous and volunteer participants aged ≥21 years answered 30 questions in five categories (socio-demographics; social media usage; influenza- and vaccine-related knowledge and behavior; health-related information search, its reliability and influence; and COVID-19-related information search). A univariate descriptive data analysis was performed, followed by multivariate analysis via building a decision tree to define the most important attributes associated with vaccination compliance.

Results:

213 anonymous volunteer subjects responded; mostly females, aged 21-40 years, having 1-2 children, living in central Israel, secular Israeli-natives, having higher education and a salary close to the national average. The majority of respondents were not vaccinated against influenza in 2019 and used social media. Participants that use social media, were younger, secular, living in high-density agglomerations, and had lower influenza vaccination rates. The perceived influence and reliability of the information on social media about COVID-19 were generally similar to that available on influenza.

Conclusions:

Using social media is negatively linked to compliance with seasonal influenza vaccination. A high proportion of non-compliant individuals can lead to increasing consumption of healthcare services and so an overload of the system. This is particularly critical with a concomitant outbreak, such as COVID-19. Healthcare professionals should use improved and targeted health communication campaigns with the aid of experts in social media. Targeted communication, based on socio-demographic factors and personalized social media usage, might increase influenza vaccination rates and compliance with other vaccines as well.