Abstract
Background: young adults represent a critical target for mass-vaccination strategies of COVID-19 that aim to achieve herd immunity. Healthcare students, including dental students, are perceived as the upper echelon of health literacy; therefore, their health-related beliefs, attitudes and behaviors influence their peers and communities. The main aim of this study was to synthesize a data-driven model for the predictors of COVID-19 vaccine willingness among dental students. Methods: a secondary analysis of data extracted from a recently conducted multi-center and multi-national cross-sectional study of dental students’ attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination in 22 countries was carried out utilizing decision tree and regression analyses. Based on previous literature, a proposed conceptual model was developed and tested through a machine learning approach to elicit factors related to dental students’ willingness to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Results: machine learning analysis suggested five important predictors of COVID-19 vaccination willingness among dental students globally, i.e., the economic level of the country where the student lives and studies, the individual’s trust of the pharmaceutical industry, the individual’s misconception of natural immunity, the individual’s belief of vaccines risk-benefit-ratio, and the individual’s attitudes toward novel vaccines. Conclusions: according to the socio-ecological theory, the country’s economic level was the only contextual predictor, while the rest were individual predictors. Future research is recommended to be designed in a longitudinal fashion to facilitate evaluating the proposed model. The interventions of controlling vaccine hesitancy among the youth population may benefit from improving their views of the risk-benefit ratio of COVID-19 vaccines. Moreover, healthcare students, including dental students, will likely benefit from increasing their awareness of immunization and infectious diseases through curricular amendments.
Highlights
The race towards achieving substantial levels of population immunity, commonly known as herd immunity, against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) embraces a myriad of milestones that should be unlocked by the world’s governments by fall 2021 [1]
Regarding their COVID-19-related experience, 16.6% had been previously infected by SARS-CoV-2, and 27.2% provided care to COVID-19 patients
While 87.4% of the participants knew someone who was infected by SARS-CoV-2, 45.7% of them knew someone who died due to SARS-CoV-2
Summary
The race towards achieving substantial levels of population immunity, commonly known as herd immunity, against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) embraces a myriad of milestones that should be unlocked by the world’s governments by fall 2021 [1]. The low risk of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality among the youth population can trigger reluctance and/or resistance to getting vaccinated against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus—2 (SARS-CoV-2) [2,3,4,5,6]. The COVID-19 mass vaccination strategies followed a priority approach that was suggested by the World Health Organization (WHO) and endorsed by all its member states; the older adults, healthcare personnel, essential workers, etc., were prioritized to receive COVID-19 vaccines at the expenses of the young adults who had to wait around six months until they were permitted to register for vaccination [8,9]. The negative impacts of social media on vaccine acceptance levels were found in the Czech Republic, Palestine, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States of America (US) [13,15,16,17]
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