Attitudes about disease susceptibility and vaccine safety in Richmond County, Georgia

Four vaccines for adolescents are on the U.S. routine immunization schedule: Tdap, HPV, MCV4 and seasonal flu. We surveyed parents’ (n=686) attitudes, beliefs and behaviors in a multi-faceted study designed to promote vaccine acceptance among adolescents attending 11 middle and high-schools in eastern Georgia. Though the vast majority of parents surveyed (98%) indicated that their child’s routine vaccinations were up to date, only 22% reported that their teen had received all four vaccines (Tdap, MCV4, at least one dose of HPV and the current season’s flu vaccine.) While 80% of parents agreed that “immunizations are always proven safe before they are approved for use”, 60% reported believing that their child could get sick from a vaccine and 28% reported that their child’s immune system could be weakened by too many immunizations. About 37% of parents reported that teens should only be immunized against serious diseases and 31% said they would only vaccinate their child if it was required for school entry. For MCV4 only, a higher proportion of parents who believe vaccines are safe reported their child receiving the vaccine (60%) than those parents who believe vaccines are unsafe (45%) (p=0.0004).  There are incongruent beliefs among parents in this study regarding the safety of vaccines that may impact vaccine acceptance for their adolescents. While overall vaccine acceptance is a societal norm for infant vaccines, momentum in this important area appears to wane by the time these children reach their teen years and has important public health implications for improving adolescent vaccination.