The preferred method for reminding a child's vaccination schedule among Iranian parents

Abstract

Background:The most important reason for vaccination delay is the unawareness of the parents of vaccination schedule. The use of reminders can result in better vaccination coverage.Objectives: This study aimed to determine the preferred method of receiving vaccination reminders from the parents' perspective. Study design: Cross-sectional study. Methods: We studied the parents of under 7-year-old children who visited one of the six urban health centres in Mashhad for vaccination of their children in 2017. Three hundred parents were participated based on the convenience sampling method. Data were collected using a questionnaire consisting of five sections. Five Medical Informatics specialists confirmed the validity of the questionnaire. The data were analysed by descriptiveinferential statistics and the significance level was set at p < 0.05.Results: Around 94% of the participants wanted to be reminded about their children's vaccination schedule. Most of them (74.3%) preferred to receive reminders by short text messaging (SMS) and 42% preferred to be reminded 1 day before the vaccination date (n ¼ 42%). The tendency to receive reminders and the preferred method had no significant correlation with participants' age, education degree and residential area.