New research focuses on encouraging seniors to get vaccinated

A Sudbury researcher will start collecting data once COVID-19 vaccinations begin at local long term care homes.

The health unit will begin distributing the Moderna vaccine next week to residents of long term care and retirement residences. Meanwhile, a probe will be launched into vaccine hesitancy in long term care settings.

Dr. Janet McElhaney, scientific director of Health Sciences North Research Institute (HSNRI) and chair of healthy aging for HSNRI, says the research she's conducting must be done in real time.

"It all comes back to ... trying to make sure they have up-to-date information in their decision to get vaccinated," she said.

"It's not that people are resistant to vaccinations, they just feel like they need more information."

She is working on the project with St. Joseph's Health Centre.

McElhaney notes that only about 30 to 50 per cent of those within long term care currently get vaccinated, and most are health care workers.

"There are multiple aspects of vaccine hesitancy."

McElhaney says they'd eventually like to vaccinate more than 80 per cent of people to provide what's known as herd immunity.

"Fifty per cent is not going to be enough in these settings. And so that's what we're really hoping, is that in the end, that we have supported vaccination rates in that range."

Researchers will be talking to recipients of the vaccine, and the people who are delivering the vaccines, to ask about their vaccination experience, retrospectively.

Current practices around vaccination involve the CARDs approach: comfort, ask, relax and distract.

"And so what that means is that when you're giving consent to get vaccination, you want to think about the things that make you feel comfortable during the vaccination process. The 'ask' is about asking the kinds of questions that you need to make that decision to get vaccinated," McElhaney said.

"Some of the other things that we're offering around this is anesthetic creams that would help to minimize the pain with the injection or Tylenol to help manage the potential side effects of these vaccines, so that you're going into that vaccine experience and can feel very relaxed. The 'distract' part is, would you like to look at the needles going in, or would you rather play music or have a loved one there while you're getting vaccinated to distract you from getting vaccinated?"

The research is part of "a whole process around improving the vaccination experience," she added. 

"People know what to expect from flu vaccines. They don't [know what to expect] from these COVID-19 RNA vaccines."