The challenge of vaccinating adults: attitudes and beliefs of the Canadian public and healthcare providers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Vaccine coverage for recommended vaccines is low among adults. The objective of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of adults and healthcare providers related to four vaccine-preventable diseases and vaccines (diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis, zoster, pneumococcus and influenza). DESIGN: We undertook a survey and focus groups of Canadian adults and healthcare providers (doctors, nurses, pharmacists). A total of 4023 adults completed the survey and 62 participated in the focus groups; 1167 providers completed the survey and 45 participated in the focus groups. RESULTS: Only 46.3% of adults thought they were up-to-date on their vaccines; 30% did not know. In contrast, 75.6% of providers reported being up-to-date. Only 57.5% of adults thought it was important to receive all recommended vaccines (compared to 87.1-91.5% of providers). Positive attitudes towards vaccines paralleled concern about the burden of illness and confidence in the vaccines, with providers being more aware of disease burden and confident in vaccine effectiveness than the public. Between 55.0% and 59.7% of adults reported willingness to be vaccinated if recommended by their healthcare provider. However, such recommendations were variable; while 77.4% of the public reported being offered and 52.8% reported being recommended the influenza vaccine by their provider, only 10.8% were offered and 5.6% recommended pertussis vaccine. Barriers and facilitators to improved vaccine coverage in adults, such as trust-mistrust of health authorities, pharmaceutical companies and national recommendations, autonomy versus the public good and logistical issues (such as insufficient time and lack of vaccination status tracking), were identified by both the public and providers. CONCLUSIONS: Despite guidelines for adult vaccination, there are substantial gaps in knowledge and attitudes and beliefs among both the public and healthcare providers that lead to low vaccine coverage. A systematic approach that involves education, elimination of barriers and establishing and improving infrastructure for adult immunisation is required.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".