Influenza vaccination is crucial for at-risk populations, particularly those with a history of cardiovascular disease. Recent data emerging from three comprehensive trials in Denmark highlights the effectiveness of electronic nudges—specifically, behavioral messages aimed at increasing vaccination rates among patients who have experienced an acute myocardial infarction (MI). Conducted with a large sample size of over 2 million individuals, these studies shed light on how targeted communication can potentially influence public health outcomes.
Ankeet Bhatt, MD, along with his colleagues, presented their results at the American Heart Association annual meeting and subsequently published their findings in JAMA Cardiology. The studies revealed a notable increase in flu vaccine uptake among patients with a history of MI when they received specifically tailored letters. Notably, those patients experienced an increase of 3.91 percentage points in vaccination rates compared to a rise of merely 2.03 percentage points for their counterparts without such a history. This clearly indicates that the tailored communication had substantial resonance with individuals who had a previous cardiac event (P=0.002).
This response was not limited to those who had been vaccinated in the previous season. The letters particularly benefited unvaccinated patients, leading to a dramatic surge of 13.7 percentage points in uptake among those in the acute MI category, as opposed to only 1.48 percentage points among those without prior vaccination (P
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