De Bekker-Grob, E. W., Veldwijk, J., Jonker, M., Donkers, B., Huisman, J., Buis, S., ... & Bindels, P. (2018). The impact of vaccination and patient characteristics on influenza vaccination uptake of older adults: A discrete choice experiment. Vaccine , 36 (11), 1467-1476.
The above article looks at various information to help improve the vaccination process that will be in line with the goals of the EU and World Health Organization. The study sought to identify how patient characteristics and vaccination could affect the uptake of influenza vaccination among elderly people. The research would be conducted using an online discrete choice experiment (DCE) that incorporated 1261 participants from the Dutch general population who were above the age of 60 years ( De Bekker-Grob et al., 2018) . The researchers incorporated influenza vaccination scenarios based on five vaccination characteristics including effectiveness, risk of severe side effects, risk of mild side effects, protection duration, and absorption time. It was assumed that the preference for undertaking a multi-facetted medical intervention would first consider the consequences of such an intervention into the above characteristics. Those traits are further specified into specific variants of the characteristics like 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% chance of effectiveness ( De Bekker-Grob et al., 2018) . Therefore, the individual’s preference for medical intervention for influenza vaccination including rejection will be determined by these attribute levels.
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The research found that there was vaccination and patient characteristics both had significant influence on the influenza vaccination uptake. The base case scenario showed predicted uptake levels of 58%, but this would increase with one-way changes to vaccination characteristics and patient characteristics from 46% to 61% and from 37% to 95% ( De Bekker-Grob et al., 2018) . It was evident that primary factor in ensuring influenza uptake was whether or not the patient had been vaccinated the previous year and whether that had resulted in significant side effects of the vaccination. The results were based on 88.9% respondents out of the 1419 who had started the survey, with the participants identifying their various health status and affected conditions ( De Bekker-Grob et al., 2018) . One of the weaknesses of the research is drawn from the fact that researchers did not have conclusive proof that indeed side effects were a primary cause for rejection of vaccination. The participants are laymen and have little medical background to recognize the impact of the vaccination.
References
De Bekker-Grob, E. W., Veldwijk, J., Jonker, M., Donkers, B., Huisman, J., Buis, S., ... & Bindels, P. (2018). The impact of vaccination and patient characteristics on influenza vaccination uptake of older adults: A discrete choice experiment. Vaccine , 36 (11), 1467-1476.
