Nationwide health, socio-economic and genetic predictors of COVID-19 vaccination status in Finland.

Understanding factors associated with COVID-19 vaccination can highlight issues in public health systems. Using machine learning, we considered the effects of 2,890 health, socio-economic and demographic factors in the entire Finnish population aged 30-80 and genome-wide information from 273,765 individuals. The strongest predictors of vaccination status were labour income and medication purchase history. Mental health conditions and having unvaccinated first-degree relatives were associated with reduced vaccination. A prediction model combining all predictors achieved good discrimination (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, 0.801; 95% confidence interval, 0.799-0.803). The 1% of individuals with the highest predicted risk of not vaccinating had an observed vaccination rate of 18.8%, compared with 90.3% in the study population. We identified eight genetic loci associated with vaccination uptake and derived a polygenic score, which was a weak predictor in an independent subset. Our results suggest that individuals at higher risk of suffering the worst consequences of COVID-19 are also less likely to vaccinate.

Increasing vaccine acceptance using evidence-based approaches and policies: Insights from research on behavioural and social determinants presented at the 7th Annual Vaccine Acceptance Meeting.

BACKGROUND: In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) flagged vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 threats to global health. The drivers of and barriers to under-vaccination include logistics (access to and awareness of affordable vaccines), as well as a complex mix of psychological, social, political, and cultural factors. INCREASING VACCINE UPTAKE: There is a need for effective strategies to increase vaccine uptake in various settings, based on the best available evidence. Fortunately, the field of vaccine acceptance research is growing rapidly with the development, implementation, and evaluation of diverse measurement tools, as well as interventions to address the challenging range of drivers of and barriers to vaccine acceptance. ANNUAL VACCINE ACCEPTANCE MEETINGS: Since 2011, the Mérieux Foundation has hosted Annual Vaccine Acceptance Meetings in Annecy, France that have fostered an informal community of practice on vaccination confidence and vaccine uptake. Mutual learning and sharing of knowledge has resulted directly in multiple initiatives and research projects. This article reports the discussions from the 7th Annual Vaccine Acceptance Meeting held September 23-25, 2019. During this meeting, participants discussed emergent vaccine acceptance challenges and evidence-informed ways of addressing them in a programme that included sessions on vaccine mandates, vaccine acceptance and demand, training on vaccine acceptance, and frameworks for resilience of vaccination programmes.