Engaging parents to advocate for immunizations in their communities: Results from an evaluation of the Immunity Community program

To address vaccine-hesitancy and the high vaccine exemption rate in Washington State, Vax Northwest (a public-private partnership) is implementing and testing a three-year community engagement intervention, called “Immunity Community.”  The intervention mobilizes parents who value immunization and provides them with tools to help them engage in positive dialogue about immunizations in their communities (e.g. schools, childcare centers, and in social media). Goals of the program include increasing conversations about the positive aspects of vaccination and reinforcing the idea of vaccination as a social norm. The evaluation, conducted by the Center for Community Health and Evaluation, uses qualitative and quantitative methods to describe the acceptance and implementation of campaign materials, assess program implementation including facilitators and barriers to success, and track intermediate outcomes of the intervention such as parental knowledge and attitudes. Recommendations from each year of the Immunity Community evaluation were used to provide formative feedback for program improvement in each successive phase of the pilot.  The presentation will describe evaluation findings from this three-year intervention.  There were a number of promising findings from the first two years, including that parents who vaccinate can be mobilized and engaged as advocates given the appropriate resources and support.  The third year of the intervention tests the ability to spread to a second geographic region in Washington State.