Motivators and Barriers of Seasonal Influenza Vaccine Uptake among Adults, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Background: Understanding the specific barriers for uptaking seasonal influenza vaccine, faced by different demographic groups, can lead to targeted communication strategies that resonate with the community’s values and beliefs.Objectives: To estimateof the rate of uptaking seasonal influenza vaccine in the last season and vaccine acceptance rate in the current season as well as defining motivators for uptaking as well as barriers for not uptaking the vaccine aamong adult general population.Subjects and methods: A cross-sectional population-based online survey was conducted among adult population of all natinalities, aged over 18 years and currently living in Riyadh city, Saudi Arabia. An electronic Arabic/English questionnaire was utilized for collecting data. It included four main sections: Socio-demographic, habitual and medical characteristics of the participants, awareness about the importance of seasonal influenza vaccine and source of information about that, attitude towards seasonal influenza vaccine, motivators and barriers of uptaking seasonal influenza vaccine.Results: A total of 361 participantss were included in the study. The age of almost a third of them (36%) ranged between 25 and 34 years whereas that of 9.7% was 65 years and above. Males represented 54.8% of the participants. Overall, 49% of the participants expressed neutral attitude towards seasonal influenza vaccine whereas 34.1% and 16.9% expressed either positive or negative attitude, resspectively. The commonly reported motivator to uptake the seasonal influenza vaccine was to prevent illness and reduce influenza complications (78.7%), followed by protection during Umrah and Hajj (37.1%), social responsibility and collective immunity (33.5%) and positive past experience with the vaccine (27.7%) while the most frequenmtly reported barriers of not to uptake the vaccine was fear of side effects (75.9%), followed by misinformation or myths (41%), prior negative experience with the vaccine (29.4%), perceived natural immunity (27.1%) and lack of knowledge or awareness (25.2%).Conclusion: Majority of adult population in Riyadh expressed either neutral or positive attitude towards seasonal influenza vaccine. The commonly reported motivator to uptake the seasonal influenza vaccine was prevention of illness and reduction of influenza complications while the most frequently reported barrier was fear of side effects.