Providing Incentives Doesn’t Increase Pertussis Vaccination Among Infant Caregivers

With a tripling of pertussis incidence in the past five years, public health practitioners are looking for ways to protect babies.  Part of the problem is that few infant caregivers are vaccinated against the disease.  Researcher Alison Buttenheim and her colleagues tested two possible approaches to changing this: a celebrity public service announcement and free or discounted vouchers for getting the vaccine.   As reported in the February 2016 issue of the journal Vaccine, nothing seemed to work: of the 95 women participating in the randomized trial, only one redeemed the voucher to get vaccinated.  Read more at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X15017491.