The Coronavirus disease of 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic remains one of the most dreaded infectious diseases that the world ever witnessed. The condition led to diverse measures to control and stop its spread and adverse effects like mortality and severe disease. One of the initiative that the World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration and cooperation with different stakeholders used was the development of a vaccine and offering shots to people to protect them against the condition. However, effective uptake of vaccines was hampered due to several reasons, key among them lack of awareness and information about these inoculations (Kaim et al., 2021). Health education about Covid-19 for the general population is essential in raising awareness and information on the up take of the vaccines to deal with the health issue.
Evidence-based practice (EBP) requires one to develop a PICOT question to tackle the identified health issue, in this case increased public health education to improve vaccinations against Covid-19. The PICOT question for the project is: Among the general population and individuals at risk of Covid-19 (P) will the use of health education about covid-19 vaccination plans (I) as compared to no intervention (C) lead to a 50% increased willingness to take covid-19 vaccine (O) within six months (T)? The purpose of this paper is to review articles selected for the EBP project on health education to increase up take of Covid-19 vaccines in the general population.
Search methods
The search of existing literature focused on getting peer-reviewed articles that support the PICOT question through known or relevant databases, use of related key terms like Covid-19 pandemic, use of health education for vaccine up take, and role of nurses. The literature review search focused on different databases that included PubMed, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and MEDLINE as well as Google Scholar. The paper also employed the key terms and words from the PICOT question to improve the search and limit the possible articles that addressed the issue of public health education related to increasing up take of Covid-19 jabs in the general population. The strategy also entailed a keen focus on using systematic reviews and meta-analyses as highest levels of evidence. The search also narrowed down to articles produced in English without any translation. The key words aligned the search to the PICOT question. The other aspects of the search were to filter the articles using the CRAAP approach where articles were evaluated based on the currency, accuracy, authority, and purpose to the selected issue.
Synthesis of Literature Based on the Articles
The first article by Motta et al. (2020) discusses the need for effective health communication to encourage the public to take the Covid-19 vaccine. The aim of the study was to determine the effectiveness of educational messages in increasing the willingness to have Covid-19 vaccine. The study integrated 7064 individuals to determine if effective messaging from public health entities improved vaccine up take. The article supports the PICOT question as it shows the effectiveness of the proposed intervention, health education, to encourage and increase public’s up take of the Covid-19 jab.
The second article by James (2021) focuses on the effects of persuasive messaging in increasing up take of Covid-19 vaccines. The authors contend that low up take of vaccines will prolong the pandemic. However, a core aspect of convincing the public to take vaccines is through health education. The quantitative study used educational messages that it sent to individuals to improve their uptake vaccines. The authors are categorical that using persuasive messaging allows more people to focus on their responsibility to stop the spread of the condition. The article supports the PICOT question as it shows the efficacy of persuasive messages to the public as an intervention to improve vaccine taking by individuals.
The third article by Jensen et al. (2022) aims at evaluating the effectiveness of video-based messages to reduce vaccine hesitancy and use for the general population to prevent and reduce the rise in Covid-19 and associated severe effects. The authors use online experiment to demonstrate that willingness to get vaccinated is influenced by the kind of messaging that stakeholders. These messages increase confidence in Covod-19 vaccines and perceived behavioral approaches for vaccination. These messages altered the perception of the skeptical people who had no confidence in Covid-19 vaccines. Imperatively, the article supports the PICOT question by showing the effectiveness of messages to improve uptake of the developed vaccines to reduce the spread and severity of Covid-19 pandemic.
The fourth article by Piltch-Loeb et al. (2021) examines the eff
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