Research Insights: Can Reminders Boost Vaccination Rates?

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Date
Oct 2019
While families in rural Guatemala recognize the value of vaccination and mostly vaccinate their children at early ages, they often fail to follow through with the course of treatment, drastically reducing the probability of immunization. To encourage members of underserved communities to complete the vaccination cycle, community health workers were given monthly lists of children due for vaccination at the clinic, enabling them to send timely reminders to families. Reminders increased the likelihood that children completed their vaccination treatment by 2.2 percentage points in the treatment communities. For children in treatment communities who were due to receive a vaccine, and whose parents were expected to be reminded of the due date, the probability of vaccination completion increased by 4.6 percentage points.