Research Proposal Presentation Rough Draft

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Assessing Current Approaches to Childhood Immunizations

Department of Psychology, Grand Canyon University

PSY 693: Professional Capstone

Dr. Larry Katz

July 28, 2021

Assessing Current Approaches to Childhood Immunizations

Introduction

Immunization is the practice that involves the vaccination of people to protect them from illnesses. Child immunization is the most critical public health approach which reduces child mortality and morbidity in most countries. This paper will discuss and evaluate the current approaches to childhood immunization globally; immunization is estimated to have prevented a 2.5million deaths of children every year from tetanus, measles, diphtheria, and pertussis (Dube et al., 2013). This research is essential in psychology as vaccination is among the most remarkable 20th-century achievements but still a public health issue, including inadequate, unstable, and delayed uptake of vaccines. Psychology provides three main prepositions to comprehend and intervene to increase uptake in places where vaccines are entirely within people’s means. This research is vital as, through thoughts and feelings, individuals will be motivated to get vaccinated (Brewer et al., 2017). During this research, people's respect, beneficence, and justice will be upheld in various ways. Respect for persons will include treating participants as autonomous agents, and those with reduced autonomy will be given protection. For beneficence, people's decisions are not only respected or protected but their general well-being will also be secured. No harm will be made, and maximum possible benefits will be made, thus minimizing probable damage. To maintain justice, the results of the research will be shared equally among the relevant authorities.

Literature Review

In developing countries, Immunization is still low than in those countries which are already developed. According to Gesser-Edelsburg et al., most parents lack education regarding Immunization. Many in these countries do not comply with immunization schedules as per the Expanded Program. According to Thapar et al., in 2014, around 18.7 million children could not get the third dose of the Diphtheria-Pertussis-Tetanus (DPT3) vaccine (Thepar et al., 2021). The total number of children who have received the DPT3 vaccine is a representation indicator concerning full Immunization. When it comes to service delivery, the DPT3 vaccination measures the performance of a health system and evaluates the effectiveness of an immunization program concerning service delivery. According to Thepar et al., the global coverage of measles was at 86 percent, while that of DPT and DPT3 was 90 and 86 percent. The above approximations do not clearly show the seen differences in vaccine coverage. The routine has been lower in India than in other countries (Girmay et al., 2019). After the 2013 outbreak in Israel, most parents became reluctant to take their children to receive Oral Polio Vaccine, and the frequent reoccurrence of poliomyelitis followed this. To achieve maximum immunization coverage, the global vaccine action plan (GAVP) ‘requested countries to attempt and reach it by 2020 for all vaccines. Despite this request, some countries with under-vaccinated children were hesitant from parents (Dubé et al., 2016). Many studies have been carried out, but there is no enough evidence concerning the factors associated with vaccine hesitance (Dubé et al., 2013). This study will assist in adopting a more panoramic lens for these factors to be put into focus and know how they are graded universally.

Various factors are currently being induced by vaccine uptake among the children’s parents. Parents who refuse their children to be fully vaccinated always defend themselves based on their beliefs (Girmany and Dadi 2019). According to Gesser-Edelsburg et al., the public perception risk depends on context analysis. Also, those parents who give their children full Immunization of other vaccines but not oral polio do that because they lack faith in the healthcare system (Gesser-Edelsburg et al., 2016).

Methods and Data Collection

The study will use primary and secondary data to collect information. The primary data will be taken from individual structured interviews, which will be from the mothers. Telephone surveys will also be used in the collection of data. Secondary data will be taken from demographic and health survey programs. All children who will have received Immunization in the past year will be marked out. Simple random stratified sampling will choose those participants required to test the hypotheses (Wang et al., 2018). A community-based cross-sectional study will be used to carry out the analysis. It will help the researcher gather and analyze data, which is essential in addressing research questions (Thomas, 2020).

Hypothetical Findings

For all the mothers who will participate in the research, the mean and standard deviation of their age will be considered in terms of years to identify those stuck in beliefs and other factors, making them reluctant to take their children to finish vaccination as scheduled. After that, a correlation will be made to determine whether the mothers' age and vaccine hesitance have a relationship. To conclude the mother’s vaccine hesitance, their beliefs, religion, and education level will be considered.

Recommendations

Future studies concerning the health conditions that occur when a child does not get full Immunization will rise if the study succeeds. If the survey recognizes these mothers to be reluctant in taking their children from vaccination, different studies may be arranged in the future. Those studies will thus determine various digital technologies which can be used to trace those mothers who do not take their children for complete Immunization.

References

Brewer, N. T., Chapman, G. B., Rothman, A. J., Leask, J., & Kempe, A. (2017). Increasing vaccination: putting psychological science into action. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 18(3), 149-207.

Dubé, E., Laberge, C., Guay, M., Bramadat, P., Roy, R., & Bettinger, J. A. (2013). Vaccine hesitancy: an overview. Human vaccines & immunotherapeutic, 9(8), 1763-1773.

Dubé, E., Vivion, M., Sauvageau, C., Gagneur, A., Gagnon, R., & Guay, M. (2016). " Nature does things well; why should we interfere?" Vaccine hesitancy among mothers. Qualitative Health Research, 26(3), 411-425.

Etikan, I., & Bala, K. (2017). Sampling and sampling methods. Biometrics & BiostatisticsInternational Journal, 5(6), 00149.

Gesser-Edelsburg, A., Shir-Raz, Y., & Green, M. S. (2016). Why do parents who usually vaccinate their children hesitate or refuse? General good vs. individual risk. Journal of Risk Research, 19(4), 405-424.

Girmay, A., & Dadi, A. F. (2019). Full immunization coverage and associated factors among children aged 12-23 months in hard-to-reach areas of Ethiopia. International Journal of pediatrics, 2019.

Thapar, R., Kumar, N., Surendran, P., Shahdiya, A., Mahendran, V., Ramesh, R, & Kumar, A. (2021). Vaccine hesitancy among mothers of under-five children in Coastal South India: a facility-based cross-sectional study. F1000Research, 10(186), 186.

Thomas, L. (2020, May 8). What is a cross-sectional study? Retrieved from

Wang, N., Gao, X., & Li, J. (2018). Random sampling for fast face sketch synthesis. Pattern Recognition, 76, 215-227.