Positive and negative factors of parents vaccinating their children against COVID-19: An umbrella review

Abstract

Purpose: This umbrella review summarized the factors influencing parents' hesitancy to vaccinate their children against COVID-19 and the evidence to reduce it.

Methods: The analysis included PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and Scopus articles published before March 22, 2024. It considered all meta-analyses that investigated parental COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.

Results: Eight studies were included. Hesitancy rate of parents from five continents to vaccinate their children against COVID-19 was between 0.69 % and 95.0 %. The comprehensive synthesis in this review shows that the influencing factors originate from four aspects: Parents' attitudes, including their trust in the scientific community, concerns about COVID-19 complications, perceptions of children's susceptibility, and support from the social environment, including government incentives, low vaccination costs, and specific sociodemographic characteristics, were positive factors that reduced parental vaccine hesitancy in children. Conversely, negative aspects, including vaccine distrust, the spread of misinformation, poor economic status, and concern about unprecedentedly short development time, were associated with increased hesitancy.

Conclusion: Our study identified positive and negative factors for parental COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in children and highlighted that parental attitude was the most important determinant.

Keywords: COVID-19; Child; Parent; Umbrella review; Vaccination; Vaccine hesitancy.