Title : Global mapping of evidence on vaccination related education delivery through school based curriculum: A scoping review
Abstract:
India continues to face challenges in reaching the target of "leaving no child behind" and sustaining child immunization coverage of 90% and more. A significant barrier to achieving universal immunization is vaccine hesitancy and avoidance. Vaccine hesitancy is a complex issue influenced by various factors, including misinformation, cultural beliefs, and a lack of understanding about vaccine safety and efficacy. Changing this behaviour requires going beyond traditional programmatic and communication strategies to build trust and awareness among the population. School curriculum can be utilized to instil knowledge of benefits of vaccines through health education thereby increasing demand of vaccine in the community.
This poster reviews the available evidences of utilizing school curriculum as a platform for vaccine education in an effective way. The poster examines various interventions designed to increase the knowledge and awareness of children, teachers, and parents in schools regarding the benefits of vaccination, as well as to summarize the component of the interventions. Additionally, the poster explores efforts made to integrate this knowledge into formal educational content, either as part of the curriculum or through teacher training programs. In this scoping review we followed the Arksey and O’Malley’s framework and included studies with
1. Primary studies related to higher classes or vaccine specific publications like for HPV Vaccine are included.
2. Interventions in school student/ teachers/ parents related to their knowledge enhancement for vaccines or vaccination are included.
3. Efforts to increase the knowledge of the students/teachers/parents on vaccination during the program interventions are also made part of this review.
The review found none of the study has formalised the education content on vaccination/immunization. Not all study were focused on complete immunization knowledge rather focused on a specific vaccine like HPV/Hepatitis B except Shocker et al study which focused on behaviour change. The studies are a mix of quantitative and qualitative approach to assess the perception of the responders.
The review concludes that, the sustainable approach of creating demand for vaccination through school education and defining a curriculum on immunization for school students could be a long term strategic approach. There is thus a scope of generating evidences in this regard.
