Expert explainer: Strategies to improve childhood vaccination uptake
PhD candidate Meron Mengistu reviewed strategies for raising childhood vaccination rates worldwide and found that no single approach worked the same in every setting.
Meron Mengistu, a health and rehabilitation sciences PhD candidate in Western’s Faculty of Health Sciences, studies how to raise childhood vaccination rates. She told Western News that reasons children miss shots overlap, from long distances and cost to misinformation, mistrust, clinic stock-outs and conflict.
She notes that about 85 per cent of infants worldwide received all three DTP doses in the latest 2025 estimates, against a global target of at least 90 per cent. About 13.5 million children were classed as zero-dose.
Her review grouped strategies by where they act: demand, service delivery, system and multi-level. In Saskatoon, telephone reminders raised MMR coverage from 67.4 to 74 per cent. Cash incentives gave small but consistent gains, though only two countries supplied evidence.
Mengistu’s current study in East Africa is looking at digital tools, such as a Kenyan rumour-tracking tool for social media. Her main message is to match each strategy to local needs rather than copy one intervention.
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