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Project

Research to increase confidence in maternal vaccination by digital communication interventions.

Since pregnant women, fetuses and neonates are highly vulnerable to infectious diseases related morbidity and mortality, it of utmost important to understand barriers in the uptake of maternal vaccines to decrease vaccine hesitancy and increase vaccination coverage in fertile, pregnant and lactating women. Therefore a multidisciplinary team of experts at the University Antwerp is created, to investigate the different aspects of social media communication and its impact on vaccine confidence, acceptance and coverage in fertile, pregnant and lactating women. To study this, five research objectives are formulated: - Study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased social media communication and search behavior on attitude toward and confidence in maternal vaccines. - Develop a social listening and monitoring tool, specifically for maternal vaccination, that contributes to the systems map with social media data by identifying influential factors and that can monitor trends in vaccine hesitancy over time. - Identify interlinkage between influencing factors by using systemic thinking which may detect the dynamics among the factors that may lead to increase in vaccine confidence. - Experimental evaluation of the impact of potential social media communication strategies on behavior towards maternal vaccination. - Comparison of influential factors in different countries.
Date:23 Sep 2021 →  28 Feb 2022
Keywords:VACCINATION COVERAGE
Disciplines:Public health sciences not elsewhere classified, Social medical sciences not elsewhere classified