Parental weighting of seizure risks vs. fever risks in vaccination tradeoff decisions.
As part of a survey of about vaccination beliefs, a nationally representative sample of parents of young children answered a series of tradeoff questions that asked them to choose between two vaccination approaches that differed in terms of risks of vaccine complications, number of injections, and/or vaccine effectiveness. Most parents were willing to have their children endure more injections, and many were willing to forgo disease protection, in order to reduce the rare chance of febrile seizures. Yet, most parents were unwilling to trade disease protection to reduce the risk of fever alone, even though this is correlated with the risk of febrile seizures. Vaccine risk communications need to address the heightened emotional weight that parents give to febrile seizure risk, even when the rarity of such events is explicit.
Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States; Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States; Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States. Electronic address: bzikmund@umich.edu.
Brian J
BJ
Zikmund-Fisher
Center for Health Decision Science, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, United States.
Eve
E
Wittenberg
Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Oakland, CA, United States.
Tracy A
TA
Lieu
D000328:Adult; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D005334:Fever / Q000139:chemically induced* / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010290:Parents; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care; D012640:Seizures / Q000139:chemically induced* / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014611:Vaccination / Q000009:adverse effects*; D055815:Young Adult
Decision making; Patient education; Risk communication