Communicating COVID-19 Vaccine Information to Parents During Pandemic in Science City of Munoz, Philippines

Abstract

Despite the existing communication strategies and health information available online during the COVID-19 outbreak, the general public has found that some parts of the world got the lowest COVID-19 vaccine acceptance rates. Looking at the developmental dimension of communicating vaccine information, this paper gauges the underlying context and factors of the vaccine hesitation. This is to further assist the health information communicator to effectively craft strategies for public health. Interviews were administered as instruments of the study while the respondents were chosen through Simple Random Sampling. Thereafter, the data were analyzed by utilizing the Individual Differences Theory. As far as communication strategies are concerned, the Department of Health have found a high level of acceptance (47.2%) from the parent-respondents despite the vaccine hesitancy deeply rooted on the negative exposure to vaccine related to the dengue vaccine, Dengvaxia. Further, a significant relationship was established in the correlation between the use of social media and the age of the respondents (0.040*); poster and educational attainment (0.005**); poster and employment (0.018*); and seminar and educational attainment (0.011*), in communicating COVID-19 information. Following the framework for analysis, the exposure to COVID-19 vaccine messages leads to an attitude shift that changes the parent-respondents action towards the vaccination of their children. This study concludes that the exposure of parent-respondents to communication strategies and materials have been proven to be statistically significant factors and played a significant influence in the spread of COVID-19 vaccine information. Consequently, the use of social media as a source of information in rural communities was statistically low. This study inferred that there is a barrier in communicating health information for respondents who didn’t finish their studies and reside from rural areas whereas there is a lack of available communication materials with local context.