Assessing the Information Needs of Health Care Providers Related to Vaccine Hesitancy

Objectives: A team of librarians at the University of Florida received internal grant funding to conduct an information and resource needs assessment of local care providers in various settings and roles, related to the conversations they have with patients and the public about vaccination, focusing on COVID-19 vaccination. After the project is completed, the team will use the needs assessment results to create vaccine information resources and/or training sessions tailored to the specific needs of local care providers.

Methods: Data collection will take place in the form of interviews and focus groups with local care providers. Questions will address challenges and successes participants face when discussing vaccines with patients, as well as the information resources that would assist them during these conversations. Team members will analyze session transcripts and notes for common themes and salient takeaways and write a report detailing findings and next steps for resource creation.

To supplement the librarians’ effort on the project, two undergraduate students were hired to assist with data collection and analysis; a secondary goal of the project is to develop these students’ social science research skills. The students are assisting with developing the Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocol for the project, finalizing interview/focus group questions, conducting interviews/focus groups, correcting the automated Zoom transcripts of the interviews/focus groups, and coding the collected data.

Results: The undergraduate students have recently been hired, and, with the rest of the team, they are in the process of finalizing the IRB protocol and overall interview/focus group processes. With a goal of holding up to 20 interviews and/or focus group sessions, the team has developed a recruitment list of health care providers from a variety of local inpatient, outpatient, and community settings, including 18 individual care providers and 3 organizations or groups of care providers. Recruitment and data collection will be completed by January 2022.

Conclusions: The team expects that interviews and focus groups sessions with physicians, nurses, pharmacists, hospital chaplains, and community health workers will yield valuable insights into how to better approach conversations with patients about vaccines and address vaccine hesitancy. Likewise, this assessment will provide evidence of current gaps in available health information and local training resources that could potentially be filled by librarians.