Survey on public awareness, attitudes, and barriers for herpes zoster vaccination in South Korea

Abstract

A cross-sectional study was performed to assess current public awareness of herpes zoster (HZ) and its vaccine, determine the factors that influence people's intention regarding HZ vaccination, and investigate the barriers for vaccination by changing decisions with sequential questions regarding knowledge, cost, and physician's recommendation in the Department of Infectious Diseases, Korea University Guro Hospital, in South Korea, between August 23 and September 15 of 2013. Among 603 subjects who completed the survey, 85.7% and 43.6% subjects were aware of HZ and HZ vaccination, respectively. Women, younger age group, those with higher income or higher education levels were more likely to be aware of HZ. Overall, 85.8% of subjects aware of HZ were willing to be vaccinated or vaccinate their parents. The main obstacles for the increased acceptance toward vaccination were the high cost and low perceived risk, which decreased acceptance to 60.2%. However, physician's recommendation reversed 69.5% of the refusal to accept HZ vaccine. These results indicate that expanding public education and physician's recommendations are important factors aimed at increasing HZ vaccine coverage rate.

Keywords:

• awareness
• health surveys
• health behavior
• herpes zoster
• vaccination

Abbreviations:

• HZ, herpes zoster
• VZV, varicella zoster virus
• PHN, postherpetic neuralgia
• KUGH, Korea University Guro Hospital
• OR, odds ratio
• CI, confidence interval
• GEE, generalized estimating equation

Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest

No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Serl Hee Jang, Geum Mi Park, and Mi Young Kwon, who facilitated the performance of this study in the outpatient department.

Funding

This work was supported by a Korea University Guro Hospital grant (No. KUGH13104–001), underwritten by Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. The organization funding this study had no role in the design and performance of the study; the collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data; or the preparation, review, and acceptance of the manuscript.

Appendix

Two types of questionnaires for survey on public awareness, attitudes and barriers for herpes zoster vaccination were used. One was developed for subjects aged 50 y (Type A) and the other for subjects aged <50 y (Type B).