Enhance the willingness of healthcare workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in Germany

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Nicole Skoetz
• Subject Area: Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine ; Epidemiology and Medical Biometry/Statistics
• Term: from 2021 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 466313237

• Final Report Year: 2022

Final Report Abstract

The initial aim of the project “Enhance the willingness of healthcare workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in Germany” (Willi-Vacc) was to identify interventions enhancing the willingness of German healthcare workers to be vaccinated against COVID- 19. Therefore, we first conducted a scoping review, published in the Cochrane library, with the objective to scope the existing international research landscape on interventions for any population to enhance the willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Within this scoping review, we included 96 studies, of which 35 are ongoing studies and 61 have published results. We used an interactive scoping map to visualise the results of our scoping review, available online. We mapped the identified interventions according to pre-specified intervention categories resulting 50 communication interventions, 17 educational interventions, 16 multidimensional interventions, and 12 incentives, as well as one policy intervention. The majority of studies were conducted in English-speaking high-income countries, for various populations. Based on these results, we developed in a stakeholder meeting a more specific and narrow research question of interest for a systematic review, which is currently being finalised and with preliminary results available. The systematic review aims to investigate the effectiveness of different communication strategies to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake and willingness. From the initial search conducted 15 December 2021, we included 53 randomised studies in this review. Of those, 27 studies were included in our synthesis, of which 11 provided data for the meta-analyses. The interventions across and among the studies were very heterogeneous, therefore, we classified them according to four categories: education & information, social norm framing aiming at appealing to identity & moral values, gain framing, and loss framing. Six studies with education and information interventions, four studies with social norm framing strategies, three studies with gain framing strategies and three with loss framing strategies, all comparing to no intervention, were included in the meta-analyses. Overall, evidence from the meta-analyses showed the greatest effect on the outcome vaccine uptake. From our narrative synthesis, we found that an interactive education and information-based intervention of online sessions has in particular shown to be very effective and results in increased intention to get vaccinated, compared to no intervention. When comparing different communication interventions with each other, we found no major differences between the different communication strategies. Based on our stakeholder meetings, our findings will have implications for policy decision-making in prospective vaccination promotion, not only regarding Covid-19 vaccination.

Publications

• Interventions to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake: protocol for a scoping review. Open Science Framework 2021
  Andreas M., Iannizzi C., Monsef I., Bohndorf E., Meerpohl J.J., Piechotta & al.
  
• Protocol for a systematic review to compare communicationbased interventions to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake. OSF Registries
  Andreas M., Iannizzi C., Monsef I., Thole S., Brinkmann J., Borrmann B., Meerpohl J.J., Bohndorf E. & Skoetz N.
  
• Interventions to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake: a scoping review. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2022(8).
  Andreas, Marike; Iannizzi, Claire; Bohndorf, Emma; Monsef, Ina; Piechotta, Vanessa; Meerpohl, Joerg J. & Skoetz, Nicole