P3B340: Meeting People Where They're At: The Association Between Utilization of Community Based Organizations and Mothers' Willingness to Vaccinate Children Against COVID-19

Background: The CDC reports that over 4 million deaths worldwide are prevented by childhood vaccination. In recent years the United States has seen a historic drop in childhood vaccination, attributed to parental vaccine hesitancy, surrounding safety and side effects, and the COVID-19 pandemic. While public health entities have tried effortlessly to increase vaccine confidence amongst communities, literature suggests it may be more effective to increase efforts in partnership with community-facing and community-based organizations (CBO).

The primary goal of this study is to determine the association between maternal utilization of community-facing and community-based services (e.g., WIC, planned parenthood, church and cultural organizations) and maternal willingness to vaccinate their children against COVID-19. We hypothesize that those who have had more contact with such organizations would be more willing to vaccinate their children.

Methods: Our team conducted a cross-sectional survey to mothers with children between the ages of 6 months and 2 years, who had one pregnancy encounter at Elmhurst Hospital between March 1st, 2020 and September 1, 2021. Our team utilized SPSS to conduct a fisher's exact test to assess the nonrandom association between our variables. The preliminary analysis included responses from 22 mothers.

Results: The majority (64%) of our participants identified as Hispanic non-White, while no participant identified as White non-Hispanic. While all of the mothers in our study were vaccinated; around 41% of the respondents demonstrated an unwillingness to vaccinate their children against COVID-19. With many citing vaccine hesitancy attributed to safety and efficacy as their primary concern. About half of our participants reported utilization of services provided by CBOs. Of those who did utilize a service, 62% were willing to vaccinate their children, in comparison to 38% in the group who reported no utilization of CBO services. Our preliminary findings show no statistically significant association between maternal willingness to vaccinate children and utilization of services provided by CBOs.

Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate a marked maternal COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy that is linked to concerns about vaccine safety. Those who did utilize services had a higher percentage of willingness to vaccinate their children. While our preliminary finding was not statistically significant, the trend suggests further partnership with CBOs on vaccine education may have the potential to impact vaccine confidence amongst community members.