Perceived feasibility of a multicomponent prenatal intervention on childhood vaccinations: Findings from a national cross-sectional survey of prenatal care providers, April-June 2022.

backgroundThere are inadequate proactive interventions that take advantage of medical contacts during pregnancy to build confidence in vaccines recommended for children after birth. In addition, prenatal providers' perceptions on implementing such proactive childhood vaccination-focused interventions are not well understood.

methodsA multicomponent prenatal intervention on childhood vaccines was designed for expectant parents to include a prenatal provider recommendation encouraging age-appropriate vaccines for children after birth, an educational website on vaccine recommendations and resources, and a phone consultation with a vaccine navigator during pregnancy. Members of national prenatal provider organizations in the USA were recruited from April to June 2022 for an online cross-sectional survey to assess their demographic and practice characteristics, perceived role as vaccine advocates, training needs, perceived intervention feasibility, and perceived implementation factors.

resultsAfter data validation, 495 of 1677 responses were included for analysis. Providers expressed agreement (65.1%) with the importance of discussing vaccinations with others, but fewer (46.7%) agreed that they changed people's views on vaccination. Over half of providers agreed or completely agreed that the proposed intervention was feasible, as measured through the four-item Feasibility of Intervention Measure (% agreement range reported across items for educational website: 71.4%-75.2%; provider recommendation: 54.0%-59.7%; and vaccine navigator: 53.9%-56.7%). Availability of adequate staff resources (48.0%), time constraints (47.8%), and adequate training on childhood vaccines (45.4%) were the top three perceived implementation challenges. Perceived facilitators included availability of patient education resources on childhood vaccines (57.7%).

conclusionThe proposed intervention to build confidence in childhood vaccines was perceived by providers to be feasible in prenatal settings. Supportive strategies that reduce time and staff burden and increase provider competency to discuss childhood vaccines will be necessary to overcome perceived implementation challenges. Intervention feasibility and implementation factors should be reassessed upon actual implementation of the intervention.