American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology
SupplementNovel pandemic A (H1N1) influenza vaccination among pregnant women: motivators and barriers
Section snippets
Materials and methods
Pregnant women comprise a very small percentage of the population, estimated in some studies as approximately 1%.1, 25, 26, 27 (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports statistics on births rather than pregnancies due to the difficulties in capturing data on all pregnancies that may not result in births. Based on estimates from 2007, there were 4,316,233 live births in the United States, with a fertility rate of 69.5 live births per 1000 women and girls aged 15-44 years.) To get a
Vaccination
Approximately 4 in 10 pregnant women (42%) reported that they had received the H1N1 vaccine, and another 8% said they expected to get it by the end of March 2010 (Table 1). Half of pregnant women said they either did not intend to get the H1N1 vaccine for themselves (37%) or were not sure about getting the H1N1 vaccine by the end of March 2010 (13%) (Table 1).
Awareness of vaccine recommendation
Most pregnant women heard either “a lot” (41%) or “some” (45%) about the H1N1 vaccine (Table 1), and most (82%) knew that the public
Comment
More pregnant women received the H1N1 vaccine this year than have received seasonal influenza vaccine in past years. The overall estimate of 42% in this poll is consistent with H1N1 vaccination rates seen in other studies of pregnant women (38%,29 44%,30 and 46.6%31). This suggests pregnant women's reactions to the pandemic influenza were different than their reactions to seasonal influenza, and they were more motivated to get the vaccine. Nonetheless, a majority of pregnant women did not get
Acknowledgments
We are grateful for the assistance of several people who facilitated the development of this manuscript, including: Juliette Kendrick, MD, FACFP; William Pollard, PhD; Capt Kitty McFarlane, CMN, MPH; and Patricia Mersereau, RN, MN, CPNP, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; as well as Johanna Mailhot, MSc, at the Harvard Opinion Research Program at the Harvard School of Public Health.
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Cited by (74)
Understanding barriers and predictors of maternal immunization: Identifying gaps through an exploratory literature review
2018, VaccineCitation Excerpt :Pregnant women tend to exhibit high information-seeking behaviors [98]. Healthcare providers are critical and trusted sources of information for women during pregnancy, and the importance of a provider recommendation in a pregnant woman’s decision to receive a vaccination has been extensively demonstrated [18,21,23,25,31,35,36,39,40,43,45–47,50,52,53,57,60,61,67,69,80,92,94]. However, several studies suggest that providers may not be effectively relaying maternal vaccine information to their pregnant patients, as evidenced by the high proportion of women who report not discussing maternal vaccination with their providers [44–46,99] or dissatisfaction with the information they are given [100].
Attitudes and Beliefs of Pregnant Women and New Mothers Regarding Influenza Vaccination in British Columbia
2016, Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology CanadaTrends in reasons for non-receipt of influenza vaccination during pregnancy in Georgia, 2004-2011
2016, VaccineCitation Excerpt :The proportion of uninsured women citing this reason rose compared to women with public or private coverage. These differential impacts of the 2009/2010 pandemic corroborate findings from other studies [26], and lend important insights into how women of different backgrounds recalled or perceived influenza vaccination after the 2009/2010 pandemic. These results also imply that physicians may have refrained from promoting or offering the vaccine if they knew a woman could not afford the vaccine or they were not likely to get reimbursed for administering it.
Reprints not available from the authors.
Conflict of Interest: none.
The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The poll was funded under a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Public Health Information Coalition.
Publication of this article was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs.