Seasonal influenza vaccination uptake in junior doctors – an investigation using social network analysis

Influenza remains a major source of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Despite England’s Chief Medical Officer recommending that all frontline healthcare workers have a seasonal influenza vaccination, only 55% do, and there is interest in increasing this.

Social network analysis is a well-established research approach that looks at individuals in the context of their social connections. It has been shown that in some situations, individuals are more likely to form connections with others that exhibit similar behaviour – and this could hold true for vaccination behavior. This so-called “vaccination homophily” is thought to affect the dynamics of infectious disease spread within populations.

This work looks at the seasonal influenza vaccination status of a group of very junior doctors in the context of their social networks and follows on from a preliminary study using the same approach with medical students.  The early work showed no vaccination homophily within the medical student population of a small medical school in the North West of England. However, using the data we were able to develop an individual-based influenza outbreak simulation model to test out the effect of various vaccination strategies.

Data collection is currently ongoing using a paper-based questionnaire to collect influenza vaccination and relational data from 200 junior doctors working for a single NHS organization in England. As well as looking at vaccination status in the context of this network, data will be used to further refine the simulation model.