Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Mar 31, 2022
Open Peer Review Period: Mar 31, 2022 - May 26, 2022
Date Accepted: Oct 29, 2022
Date Submitted to PubMed: Nov 7, 2022
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Prevalence and Correlates of COVID-19 Vaccine Information on Family Medicine Practice Websites in the United States: A Cross-Sectional Website Content Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
Primary care providers are regarded as trustworthy sources of information about COVID-19 vaccines, but little is known about whether primary care practices provide information about COVID-19 vaccines on their practice websites.
Objective:
To identify the prevalence and correlates of COVID-19 vaccine information on family medicine practice website homepages in the United States.
Methods:
Between September 20 and October 8, 2021, we examined 964 U.S.-based family medicine practice websites and extracted data on the availability of COVID-19 vaccine information. We estimated prevalence of COVID-19 vaccine information on practice website homepages and used Poisson regression with robust error variances to estimate crude and adjusted prevalence ratios for correlates of COVID-19 vaccine information, including practice size, practice region, university affiliation, and presence of information about seasonal influenza vaccines.
Results:
Of 964 websites, 550 (57%) mentioned COVID-19 vaccines on their practice website homepage. As practice size increased, the likelihood of finding COVID-19 vaccine information on the homepage increased (28% among single-location practices compared to 78% among practices with 20 or more locations, p<0.01). Compared to clinics in the Northeast, clinics in the West and Mid-west had a similar prevalence of COVID-19 vaccine information on website homepages, but clinics in the South had a lower prevalence (adjusted prevalence ratio 0.8, 95% CI: 0.7 to 1.0, p=0.02).
Conclusions:
Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, primary care practitioners who promote and provide vaccines should strongly consider utilizing their existing practice websites to share COVID-19 vaccine information. These existing platforms can serve as an extension of providers’ influence on established and prospective patients who search online for information about COVID-19 vaccines.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.