Parent resources for early childhood vaccination: An online environmental scan

Early childhood vaccination is one of the most important public health interventions. However, the injections are usually painful. Clinical practice guidelines recommend using pain management strategies for infants during vaccination. Public access to online health information has increased due to the advent of internet. Parents are likely to find thousands of websites, and online video platforms of variable quality. This study aims to identify and critically appraise the quality of online parent-targeted resources concerning early childhood vaccination and determine inclusion of recommended infant pain management strategies.

An environmental scan of two main internet sources was conducted: (a) Google, (b) Social Media networks. Resources including information relating to infant vaccination and available to Canadians were included. Characteristics of resources were collected. Resource quality was evaluated using the CDC Clear Communication Index. A CDC index score of 90% and above indicates the resource is as an acceptable public communication material. Means and standard deviations were used for normally distributed data; median and interquartile range (IQR) or numbers and proportions were used for data not normally distributed or presented in categorical format.

We found 55 online resources in website format and 10 resources in video format. Overall, the mean score for the quality of resources was 60% ± 0.19. Most resources were scored as moderate to low quality (33-87%). Only 5% of material scored as acceptable quality. In terms of content, 30 (46%) resources presented information about pain management strategies during vaccination, including breastfeeding (24, 37%), holding (27, 42%), and sweet solutions (22, 34%). The remaining 35 (54%) resources made no clear statement regarding any pain management strategies during vaccination.

Most publicly accessible online parent-targeted vaccination resources were of poor quality and did not contain information related to the use of recommended pain management strategies during vaccination.