New approach needed for nursing flu vaccination campaigns

Future flu vaccination campaigns aimed at nurses and other healthcare workers should be reviewed to address common misconceptions and misgivings, according to new research findings from the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery at King’s College London. The investigation, carried out in partnership by King’s College London and the Second Military Medical University of Shanghai in China, revealed that nurses’ influenza vaccination behaviours are complex and influenced by several factors, including knowledge and risk perception. Concerns about the vaccine’s side-effects and effectiveness remain the two most frequent reasons for refusing the vaccine.

Participants in the survey were asked a series of questions designed to establish their level of knowledge and understanding of seasonal flu and the vaccine, including their perception of the risk and severity of flu; they were also asked for their vaccination history and intent for the current season and for their reasons for accepting or refusing the vaccine.

Professor Alison While, Professor of Community Nursing and Associate Dean of Education and External Affairs at the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, said:
“Our preliminary findings reveal that the influenza vaccination programme for healthcare workers is more complicated than just targeting those who haven’t been vaccinated this season. Within our sample of more than 500 nurses, we were able to divide those who had been vaccinated into the newly vaccinated and those who have continuously been vaccinated; and the unvaccinated into those who had never accepted the vaccine and those who used to accept the vaccine. It is important that we understand all four groups in order to develop different strategies that target unvaccinated healthcare workers.”

Annual epidemics of seasonal flu result in about 3 – 5 million cases of severe illness and 250,000 – 500,000 deaths worldwide, and healthcare workers can be a key factor in the spread of flu. While vaccination rates among the 522 nurses who were surveyed were higher than previous reports, at 37%, the report authors believe this might, in part, be explained by heightened media coverage of the risk of seasonal flu and H1N1 pandemics in 2009. A further 44.9% reported never receiving a vaccination during the previous five years.

Professor While continued:
“There are several conclusions we can draw from these preliminary research findings to develop future educational and communications campaigns aimed at improving uptake of the flu vaccine among nurses and other healthcare workers. There is a clear group of ‘persistent decliners’ who are in the ‘habit’ of not having the vaccination. Campaigns will therefore need to be persistent, durative and intensive. There also appears to have been an increase in the percentage of vaccinated nurses following greater media coverage of the risk of H1N1 flu, which suggests timing may be crucial to the success of vaccination campaigns.

“However, what is also clear is that more research needs to be undertaken to examine the relationship between the content and timing of vaccination campaigns and nurses’ first uptake.”

Professor Ian Norman, Associate Dean for Staff Development at the School, added:
“Since concerns about the vaccine’s side-effects and effectiveness were the two most common reasons given for refusing the vaccine, future campaigns must focus on targeting information to dispel these widespread myths.”

For more information contact:

Allie Johnstone
Communications Officer

Florence Nightingale School of Nursing & Midwifery, King’s College London

T: 020 7848 3062
E: allie.johnstone@kcl.ac.uk

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EU commitment needed on preventing mass atrocities

The EU needs to strengthen its commitment, and its strategic toolkit, to prevent mass atrocities, such as those perpetrated in Syria, according to a new report by the Task Force on the EU Prevention of Mass Atrocities, co-chaired by Professor Christoph Meyer, released today.
The report reveals that mass atrocity prevention is rarely mentioned in core EU documents despite the EU’s commitment to protecting populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, as well as its pledge to promote human rights. The EU’s development, conflict prevention and crisis management policies, for example, do not sufficiently focus on mass atrocities, even though these crimes threaten the achievement of the EU’s core goals.
Christoph Meyer, co-Chair of the Task Force and Professor of European and International Politics at King’s, said the EU’s intelligence gathering and warning functions do not systematically take into account the possibility of these types of crimes taking place.
‘The EU has the expertise, the staying power and the resources to substantially reduce the risks of mass atrocities occurring. In order to do this the EU needs to stop prioritising current crises and improve its ability to act early, before violence has started. This means not only long-term prevention, but also becoming more responsive to warnings, especially when these warnings are politically inconvenient.’
The Task Force calls for the EU to make an explicit commitment to prevent mass atrocities and to incorporate this into the next update of the European Security Strategy as well as existing strategies for human rights and conflict prevention.
Dr Chiara de Franco, the Co-ordinator of the Task Force and Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s, said: ‘Our report is a realistic assessment of what the EU could do, without great cost, to improve its capacity to prevent mass atrocities.’
According to the report the prevention of mass atrocities should be incorporated into all of the EU’s relevant activities, including its trade and development policies, through the systematic assessment of risk factors.
This should include the prevention of these types of crimes being a standard agenda item in the EU’s dialogues with third countries that are at particular risk.
Furthermore the report says arms should not be exported if there is a substantial risk that these would enable mass atrocities to be committed.
The Task Force recognises that in cases when prevention has failed sometimes military force will be needed to protect civilians from mass atrocities. However, neither the EU nor member states are currently well-equipped to launch and effectively conduct mass atrocity response operations. The Task Force asserts that any such operations must be both legal and legitimate.
The report contains six recommendations for how the EU could be better able to prevent such atrocities in the future. They are:
1.  The EU should explicitly commit to preventing mass atrocities, matching its commitment to promoting human rights.
2.  The EU should cultivate expertise in mass atrocity prevention and warning to enable it to focus resources and political attention on the countries and regions where they are most needed.
3.  The EU’s warning-response system should be strengthened to improve early action against long and short-term mass atrocity risks.
4.  The EU should employ a ‘mass atrocity lens’ by systematically incorporating the risk that mass atrocities could occur into its relations with foreign countries.
5.  The EU’s capabilities to react quickly to mass atrocities should be improved by better contingency planning for situations of imminent and/or ongoing mass atrocities.
6.  The EU should co-operate more closely with others to prevent mass atrocities. This should involve support for community-based early warning and response, building the capacities of other regional organisations such as NATO, the African Union and the United Nations.
Karen E. Smith, co-Chair of the Task Force and Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), said: ‘Mass atrocities often need a different response than conflict prevention and this is why it is important that the EU does not conflate the two. In conflict the two parties are equal, but where mass atrocities are being committed one party is culpable and must be stopped.’

Notes to editors

Professor Meyer is available for media interview. Please contact Anna Mitchell, PR Manager (Arts and Sciences), on anna.i.mitchell@kcl.ac.uk or 0207 848 3092.

View the report: The EU and the Prevention of Mass Atrocities - An Assessment of Strengths and Weaknesses
The Task Force on the EU prevention of Mass Atrocities was established by the Budapest Centre for the International Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities in 2011 to review the capabilities of the European Union in responding to threats of mass atrocities.

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