Mass Media Coverage and Influenza Vaccine Uptake

Background: Influenza vaccination coverage among those aged 65+ hovers around 60% and remains below the Health People 2020 target of 90%. In each influenza season, mass media reports on the upcoming season may serve as a reminder that the time to get vaccinated again has arrived. However, empirical evidence on the effect of media coverage on influenza vaccination uptake remains limited.

Objective: We examine the impact of media coverage by month on influenza vaccination among the elderly.

Methods: This study exploits seasonal and monthly variation in the number of reports devoted to influenza to examine the impact on vaccine uptake. We combine individual-level influenza vaccination data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) from 2010 to 2017 and media coverage data from the NewsBank database along with several other data sources including weather data from the Global Historical Climatology Network and data on the influenza season from FluView from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We estimate impacts with a regression model.

Results: Our main results indicate every 100 additional media reports about influenza published in October were associated with an increase in the vaccination uptake rate among those aged 65+ of 0.3 percentage point. The association continued to hold in November and January, but not in December. The positive association was more pronounced in late-peak seasons and in seasons where the vaccine was highly effective. These impacts were greater in magnitude for media reports with keywords related to influenza in the headline rather than in the body of the text.

Conclusion: This study provides suggestive evidence that variation in the number of media reports is associated with variation in influenza vaccination uptake, and these reports in later months can still be influential compared to earlier months.