Discussion
INFLUENZA
Within the scope of strategies to overcome vaccine hesitancy, our study has shown that a culturally attuned messaging strategy using a tailored media outlet for the community with Indian ancestry resulted in the highest improvement of vaccine willingness. Although the video message was similar within all three media outlets, the success of the campaign within the Indian radio station may be explained by a messaging tactic which has also been described in Foxworth et al.In contrast, our data also suggest that a generic approach in a culturally diverse population may even backfire, and harm the effect of national vaccination campaigns, given the negative sentiments reported by the participants during the campaign and the lower improvement of vaccine willingness, within the Dutch newspaper and FB groups.To expand upon the findings of Alsan et al.The overall effect of the present vaccination campaign study may seem small, given the 17.3% change from being vaccine hesitant to vaccine willing. However, all participants, including those from the vaccine hesitant group were exposed only once to the intervention video. Repetitive exposure to an intervention, in which information about vaccination is provided, may help to increase the change from being hesitant to acceptance substantiallyOur tailored media outlet strategy may be part of the burgeoning, so-called precision public health strategy. Precision public health is described as ‘the right intervention to the right population at the right time’Our study has various limitations. First, our study was conducted in the Netherlands, and thus, more evidence from across other countries is needed to substantiate the findings. Secondly, the tailored media outlet consisted of migrants recruited from only one ethnic group in the Netherlands. Although the community with Indian ancestry in the Netherlands is a large ethnic group, future research should demonstrate whether this strategy is applicable to other ethnic minorities and across other media outlets.In conclusion, our influenza vaccination awareness campaign study resulted in improved vaccine acceptance, especially in an ethnic group recruited from a tailored media outlet, as compared to generic media outlets, among the culturally diverse population of the Netherlands. Cultural tailoring of the communicator per se did not result in enhanced vaccine willingness. Our study also suggests that a sentiment analysis may be a good predictor of the campaign’s success. Therefore, one could envision that public health campaign strategists could use the sentiment analysis within pilot interventions to shape the final version of the public health campaign. If a pilot intervention (public health message) generates predominantly negative sentiments, one could argue that the public health campaign should be adapted such that it results in positive sentiments, to have a higher chance to obtain a successful campaign outcome.