Willingness of Patients from an Urban Safety-Net Dermatology Clinic to Receive a COVID-19 Vaccine
Main Article Content
Keywords
COVID-19, vaccination, safety-net, dermatology, survey study, patient attitudes, vaccine hesitancy
Abstract
Background: While recent vaccine development has initiated a return to pre-COVID "normalcy" both in the dermatology clinic and worldwide, significant challenges remain regarding the public’s willingness to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Dermatologists often discuss vaccinations with their patients and aid them in making evidence-based medical decisions. Previous studies have looked at the U.S. population’s willingness to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, but no studies have examined the dermatology patient population from an urban, safety-net hospital. Studies have shown that understanding the target audience is the first step towards increasing vaccine acceptance.
Methods: A cross-sectional, telephone-based survey study was administered to 326 patients of an urban, safety-net hospital from July 2020 to August 2020 in order to assess willingness to obtain a COVID-19 vaccine.
Results: Our survey study showed that 57.7% of patients with a recent dermatology appointment are willing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine and that safety concerns represent the main reason for patient hesitancy. Patients who do not regularly receive a flu vaccine, non-Caucasian patients, and those who know someone who tested positive for COVID-19 are less willing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Patients with a recent dermatology appointment are more willing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine than those who did not have a recent dermatology appointment.
Conclusions: Our results provide dermatologists, especially those working in urban safety-net clinics, with key information about the attitude of patients toward the COVID-19 vaccine.
References
2 Polack, F.P. et al. (2020) Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine. N. Engl. J. Med. 383, 2603–2615
3 Sadoff, J. et al. (2021) Interim Results of a Phase 1-2a Trial of Ad26.COV2.S Covid-19 Vaccine. N. Engl. J. Med. 384, 1824–1835
4 Reiter, P.L. et al. (2020) Acceptability of a COVID-19 vaccine among adults in the United States: How many people would get vaccinated? Vaccine 38, 6500–6507
5 Daly, M. and Robinson, E. (2020) Willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19 in the US: Longitudinal evidence from a nationally representative sample of adults from April-October 2020. medRxiv DOI: 10.1101/2020.11.27.20239970
6 Schaffer DeRoo, S. et al. (2020) Planning for a COVID-19 Vaccination Program. JAMA 323, 2458–2459
7 Volpp, K.G. and Cannuscio, C.C. (2021) Incentives for Immunity - Strategies for Increasing Covid-19 Vaccine Uptake. N. Engl. J. Med. 385, e1
8 Pawelec, G. and Picard, E. (2021) Catch-as-catch-can: mRNA vaccination boosts immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 variants. Signal Transduct. Target. Ther. 6, 259
9 Wang, C. et al. (2021) SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) vaccination in dermatology patients on immunomodulatory and biologic agents: Recommendations from the Australasian Medical Dermatology Group. Australas. J. Dermatol. 62, 151–156
10 Lazarus, J.V. et al. (2021) A global survey of potential acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine. Nat. Med. 27, 225–228
11 Attwell, K. and Smith, D.T. (2018) Hearts, minds, nudges and shoves: (How) can we mobilise communities for vaccination in a marketised society? Vaccine 36, 6506–6508
12 Thomson, A. et al. (2018) Strategies to increase vaccine acceptance and uptake: From behavioral insights to context-specific, culturally-appropriate, evidence-based communications and interventions. Vaccine 36, 6457–6458
13 Xia, T. et al. (2019) Understanding flu vaccination acceptance among U.S. adults: the health belief model and media sources. ICRCC 2, 35–37
14 CDC COVID Data Tracker. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total. Accessed September 6, 2021.
15 Al-Amer, R. et al. (2021) COVID-19 vaccination intention in the first year of the pandemic: A systematic review. J. Clin. Nurs. DOI: 10.1111/jocn.15951
16 Dror, A.A. et al. (2020) Vaccine hesitancy: the next challenge in the fight against COVID-19. Eur J Epidemiol 35, 775–779
17 Ezeonwu, M.C. (2018) Specialty-care access for community health clinic patients: processes and barriers. J Multidiscip Healthc 11, 109–119
18 Biasio, L.R. (2017) Vaccine hesitancy and health literacy. Hum. Vaccin. Immunother. 13, 701–702
19 COVID-19 vaccine information. https://www.aad.org/member/practice/coronavirus/vaccines. Accessed August 30, 2021.
20 Butt AA, Nafady-Hego H, Chemaitelly H, et al. Outcomes Among Patients with Breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 Infection After Vaccination: Breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infection. Int J Infect Dis. August 2021. doi:10.1016/j.ijid.2021.08.008
Article Sidebar
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY): lets others distribute and copy the article, to create extracts, abstracts, and other revised versions, adaptations or derivative works of or from an article (such as a translation), to include in a collective work (such as an anthology), to text or data mine the article, even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit the author(s), do not represent the author as endorsing their adaptation of the article, and do not modify the article in such a way as to damage the author's honor or reputation.
Authors retain copyright in their work and license the publisher to publish the content. The publisher is the National Society for Cutaneous Medicine, with production and publishing support provided by OJS, Open Journal Systems,see https://pkp.sfu.
Prior to January 2022, authors transferred copyright to the National Society for Cutaneous Medicine. However, all articles are freely available to anyone in the world. There are no subscription fees, page charges, or article processing charges.