Text reminders about COVID-19 boosters are as effective as free rides, new study finds

Within the first 10 months of availability, COVID-19 vaccines prevented round 235,000 deaths and 1.6 million hospitalizations within the U.S. Nevertheless, by April 2023, 19% of People nonetheless hadn’t obtained their first vaccine dose and 65% hadn’t accomplished all beneficial boosters, resulting in tens of hundreds of preventable deaths. With annual booster suggestions probably, rising booster uptake is crucial to stop future hospitalizations and deaths.

New analysis led by Katy Milkman of the College of Pennsylvania appears on the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccination efforts.

“For our megastudy, we teamed up with CVS and we bought rides from Lyft to see if decreasing the friction related to attending to and from a vaccine appointment may make a distinction,” says Milkman, the James G. Dinan Professor at Penn’s Wharton Faculty and co-director of the Conduct Change for Good Initiative at Penn, the place this analysis was carried out. “And to our shock, there was no added good thing about the free transportation over and above sending a reminder.”

The study, printed within the journal Nature, concerned a large discipline experiment together with 3.66 million CVS pharmacy sufferers who had beforehand obtained their major COVID-19 vaccination collection. Contributors obtained various kinds of textual content reminders encouraging them to get their beneficial COVID-19 booster, with some additionally being supplied free round-trip Lyft rides to their vaccination appointments.

Regardless of excessive expectations from each behavioral science specialists and lay forecasters, the outcomes confirmed that offering free transportation to vaccination websites didn’t increase vaccination charges any greater than merely sending well-designed reminder messages. Milkman and her staff discovered that their textual content reminders elevated 30-day COVID-19 booster uptake by 21% on common and had a constructive spillover impact, rising 30-day flu vaccinations by 8%.

The researchers recognized three kinds of reminder messages that had been essentially the most helpful for enhancing vaccination charges: messages encouraging recipients to make a vaccination plan that recommended a selected date, time, and site based mostly on their final vaccination; messages highlighting excessive native COVID-19 transmission charges; and messages despatched on behalf of the affected person’s native pharmacy staff.

Milkman says that, if somebody’s final vaccine was on a Tuesday at 3 p.m. at a selected CVS, as an example, the subsequent reminder would carefully match that point and site below the belief that that’s most likely a handy time and place.

“One other message highlighted excessive an infection charges of their county, and the third message was designed to make it really feel prefer it was coming from their native pharmacy staff letting them know there is a vaccine reserved for them,” Milkman says.

The examine’s information evaluation confirmed that, whereas all textual content reminders elevated vaccination charges, the messages providing free round-trip Lyft rides to and from vaccination websites didn’t produce any measurable profit over the reminders alone, suggesting that the first barrier to COVID booster vaccination is just not transportation.

“This sort of science is absolutely necessary as a result of the federal government invested closely in free-ride packages,” Milkman says. “It is essential to know what works and what would not so we will keep away from losing sources and higher tackle the issue. Our examine contributes to this by exhibiting that decreasing transportation obstacles is just not the important thing lever we have to pull proper now.”

Trying forward, Milkman and her staff on the Conduct Change for Good Initiative really feel that future analysis ought to discover extra different methods for enhancing vaccination charges. As an illustration, it may very well be value investigating the worth of cellular vaccination items that deliver vaccines on to communities, particularly in underserved areas.

Moreover, finding out extra personalised communication strategies delivered by varied trusted sources, different incentives, and different behavioral nudges designed to deal with particular obstacles to vaccination may present worthwhile new insights.

“There’s all the time extra to find out about what motivates folks and the way we will successfully encourage health-promoting behaviors,” Milkman says.