Major ArticleVaccination for child clients and employees in St Louis childcare agencies: Vaccine uptake and policies versus parents' perceptions
Section snippets
Methods
All parents and staff at 23 St Louis City and County childcare agencies were invited to participate in a survey between September-December 2014. A recruitment e-mail was sent that included a link to an electronic survey created through Qualtrics, an online survey software program. Paper questionnaires were also available at participating childcare agencies. The Saint Louis University Institutional Review Board approved this study.
Results
Twenty-three agencies agreed to participate, from which 351 parents, staff, and administrators were recruited and completed a survey (response rate, 32%). Demographics of the participants are outlined in Table 1. Most participants were parents or guardians (72.6%, n = 255), and the response rate was approximately the same among parents and staff (33.4% vs 30.4%, respectively). Most respondents were white (69.8%, n = 245), women (86.6%, n = 304), and worked full-time (73.2%, n = 257). Most
Discussion
This study found that there is strong parental and staff interest in and perceived importance for childcare staff vaccination. Despite this, there are little data being collected by agencies on staff vaccination status. A fair number of agencies never collect staff immunization data, and even among those that do, three-quarters only assess it on hire. Few parents in this study knew whether their agency staff were vaccinated. Only 14% indicated that they had ever asked about staff vaccination;
Conclusions
Vaccine-preventable diseases remain a threat to staff and children in childcare settings. Childcare agency staff vaccination can protect employees and child attendees from disease, but their uptake of influenza and pertussis vaccines needs improvement. Parents and staff support childcare agency employee vaccination and believe it is important. Future interventions should be aimed at increasing vaccine uptake, which would lower the risk of disease transmission in childcare settings and could
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Funding/Support: This study was funded by a grant from the Saint Louis University College for Public Health and Social Justice's Research Office.
Conflicts of Interest: None to report.
Disclaimer: The funding agency had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation, writing of the report, or decision to publish findings.