Telling people that 'a flu shot has been reserved for you' increases vaccination rates

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-02-18 03:00

International

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A text message telling patients that “a flu shot has been reserved for you” increases vaccination rates, according to international researchers who conducted a randomized clinical trial of 11 188 patients. The team sent a “flu shot has been reserved for you” text message, a "flu shots will be available" or no text message to participants from two large health systems in the US. They found that the "reserved for you" message produced vaccination rates that were significantly higher than no message. There was no statistically significant difference in comparison with a message simply stating that "flu shots will be available". The researchers say these findings suggest that text messaging encourages vaccination, but more research is needed to evaluate the potential benefits of messages conveying ownership sent before a primary care visit.

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Journal/
conference: JAMA Network Open

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Pennsylvania, USA

Funder: This study was supported by award P30AG034532 from the NIA/NIH, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Flu Lab, and the Penn Center for Precision Medicine Accelerator Fund and in part by the AKO Foundation and by John Alexander, Marc J. Leder, andWarren G. Lichtenstein.

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