For one Winnipeg family, the news that their four-year-old twins could soon be vaccinated against COVID-19 caused excitement.
“This was something we’ve been waiting for,” mother Kaylee Rosenblatt said in her front yard Wednesday, hours after Manitoba announced it was expanding vaccine eligibility to include children under five.
Health Canada approved Moderna’s two-dose vaccine for children ages six months to four years last week — which includes her sons, Reuben and Herschel. The dosage is approximately one quarter of the dosage given to adults.
Manitoba’s initial rollout of the youngest children will be limited to Indigenous children and those with certain health conditions when meetings open on Monday. But eligibility will expand to include more children in the age group once more vaccines are delivered to the province, said chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Rusin.
Rosenblatt said her children have already contracted COVID-19, and her oldest, Eloise, has already been vaccinated. But she’s glad her two youngest will have extra immunity against the disease before they go back to school in September.
“Even just one dose will help me feel a little more comfortable. We send them to school anyway, but I think that just reduces the risk of them having a bad reaction or a severe reaction,” she said.
But not every parent necessarily reacts this way.
And it’s important for public health communication to stay abreast of the answers to questions families may still have about vaccinating their youngest children against COVID-19, said Michelle Dredger, a professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.
“Parents are not cavaliers when it comes to decisions for their children, are they?” Dryger said.
“We have to be creative in our approaches because it’s not one-size-fits-all [situation].”
She said that generally speaking, the information parents want to see when making decisions about their children is more detailed than the level of information they would accept when making a decision for themselves.
This means that public health messages must go beyond simply telling parents how safe and effective vaccines are. He also needs to explain things like how rare an adverse reaction to a vaccine might be or how that compares to the risk of a child having a serious outcome after getting COVID-19, she said.
Michelle Driedger is a professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the U of M, focusing on public and health risk communication, risk perception, and knowledge translation in uncertain settings. (Submitted by Michelle Driedger)
“Not as a scare tactic, but certainly just as something to help … contextualize the different risks that we face,” Dredger said.
She said identifying and removing any barriers parents still face in vaccinating their children is also crucial.
“If you make things easier to access, then uptake is greater,” Dredger said.
“And if you help overcome some of those barriers that people might face to accessing any kind of public health program, whether it’s transportation or just being comfortable in a space, those are important considerations in providing public health for things like vaccines.”
It’s common for parents to feel more concerned about health interventions like vaccines for the youngest children “because they feel so fragile,” said Devon Grayson, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Health in Vancouver.
“But in this case, I think really good communication and listening and responding to the parents’ concerns can really help alleviate those concerns because babies are so well-prepared to develop immunity through vaccination,” said Grayson, who has studied the fluctuating about vaccines.
Communicating the potential risks of COVID-19 infection in children – such as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children or long covid — it’s also important to give parents the full picture when deciding whether to vaccinate their children, Grayson said.
“While the risk of serious harm to children from COVID is low, it is not non-existent. And it’s certainly much higher than any of the vaccine risks that we have in Canada,” they said.
“So I would try to reassure them by looking at the rare but very serious risks that we can protect against with this vaccine.”
Establishing trust with parents is another key part of creating a space where they feel comfortable enough to ask the questions they have about the vaccine, Grayson said.
And that could be done in a variety of ways, such as tapping family doctors, community leaders and others to help share credible information and build confidence in vaccines, they said.
But perhaps most important is having open, honest conversations about the roots of their hesitancy about vaccination, Grayson said.
Devon Grayson is an assistant professor in the School of Population and Health at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. (Submitted by Devon Grayson)
“For anyone talking to parents who have doubts or concerns, [it’s important] remember not to make parents feel uncomfortable or alienated by this… It’s normal and normal to be concerned and want to protect your babies,” they said.
“We understand that people have questions. So just being respectful and, you know, kind in answering parents’ questions, I think is a great way to build relationships and trust.”
Add Comment