Text Messages Could Help Increase COVID-19 Booster Vaccine Uptake
Individuals who received tailored text message reminders about receiving a COVID-19 booster vaccine were more likely to get it.
Tailored text message reminders emphasizing ownership and effectiveness could help increase COVID-19 booster vaccine uptake, according to research published in the journal Vaccine.1 The authors of the study said that public health authorities should include this type of intervention in their vaccination campaigns.
Text Messages Could Help Increase COVID-19 Vaccine Booster Uptake / New Africa - stock.adobe.com
The CDC currently recommends that everyone aged 6 months and older should get an updated COVID-19 vaccine to protect from severe illness, hospitalization and death.2 However, according to a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, 6 in 10 Americans say they will probably not get an updated vaccine. The 2 main reasons people said they would not get a booster were they did not think they needed it and concerns about side effects.3
READ MORE: Medication Optimization Needed for Patients with Long COVID
“Many interventions aimed at increasing vaccine uptake have been tested, ranging from education, mailed reminders, financial incentives, to legislation,” the authors wrote. “Digital push technologies, most of which entail simple and low-cost text-messages, generally show small but promising effects on vaccine uptake. Shaping such text-messages based on insights from behavioral science research has proven effective, for instance in increasing flu and COVID-19 vaccine uptake.”
A team of investigators from Radboud University Medical Center conducted a study to analyze the effect of various text messages and their impact over time on COVID-19 booster vaccine uptake. Data for the study was gathered from 2 large sequential randomized controlled trials conducted in the Netherlands.
The study cohort included 140973 participants, of which 40000 were in the first randomized controlled trial and 100973 were in the second. All participants received an initial COVID-19 vaccine series and were eligible for a booster but had not yet received it. Participants were excluded from the study if they had scheduled an appointment to receive a booster vaccine, had tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 3 months, or were younger than 18 years of age or older than 80.
In each randomized controlled trial, participants were randomly allocated to receive 1 of 4 conditions: no text message; opening hours message; date, time and location message; and opening hours and location message. All of the text messages were personalized, contained either an ownership or effectiveness frame or not, and varied in specificity about when and where the booster vaccine was available. Some messages also included a request to respond with the recipients intention to receive a vaccine or not.
In the first trial, investigators found that text messages with an ownership frame like “your vaccine is ready for you” resulted in the highest vaccine uptake. In the second trial, messages with an ownership frame that included specific date, time and location info resulted in the highest vaccine uptake. The study also found the effects from the messages held over time, with high vaccine uptake on day 50 compared to no message.
Additionally, participants who indicated that they would get a booster vaccine when a reply was requested were more likely to actually get the vaccine. The authors said that the reason these text messages may work is possibly due to increased psychological proximity and psychological ownership.
“Based on this study, a tailored text message reminder with an ownership frame and a specific date, time and location is more effective than no message, and often a basic message, also on a longer-term,” the authors concluded. “Basic text message reminders without such features hardly seem to contribute to an increased vaccination rate…We see no notable disadvantages of text message use, as the low costs of this strategy are likely to outweigh the prevented healthcare costs. We therefore advise Public Health authorities to include this effective intervention in their vaccination campaign strategies.”
READ MORE: COVID-19 Resource Center
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