Vaccination attitudes are improved by exposure to pro-vaccination messaging from nonmedical peers and individuals thought to share a similar value system for society. Nonetheless, a small number of African American parents have friends and family members who advise them on vaccines. The current study sought to establish the supposed worldview viewpoint of eight categories of community figures as seen by African American parents, as well as to assess parents’ confidence in these individuals for vaccination recommendations and if trust changed according to the persons’ racial concordance. In 2015, 110 African American parents completed a cross-sectional survey. Parents regarded the community figures to reflect a range of worldview perspectives. Although trust in community leaders varied, it was particularly strong in the school nurse, paediatrician, mother, father, illness survivor, and vaccine scientist. Except for the father, all trusted people were regarded to have a communitarian attitude. Parents who were shown race-concordant figures trusted them more than those who were shown race-discordant equivalents.
These findings imply that nonmedical African American spokespersons who express their community contributions in communications might help to enhance immunisation programmes aimed at African American parents.
Reference:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21645515.2019.1581553
