Vaccinate: Yes Or No? Research To Help Parents Decide

CEDARVILLE, Ohio, Feb. 14, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- What started as a brief hallway conversation between colleagues has now turned into a grant-funded research study about how motivational interviewing may influence parents' decisions about vaccines.

A year ago, Dr. Justin Cole, vice chair of pharmacy practice in the doctor of pharmacy program, and Dr. Aleda Chen, assistant dean of pharmacy practice, had a short conversation about how parents make decisions regarding vaccines for their children. That conversation prompted research into published studies on the topic and when they found a gap in research, a proposal for a research grant was written.

Merck Investigator Studies Program (MISP) awarded a research grant to Cole and Chen for an in-depth study about how motivational interviewing may influence parental decision-making in this critical area of health care.

Cole and Chen plan to examine how parents of children 6 years of age and less make decisions about vaccines, with the goal of creating a tool to help them make the best choice through motivational interviewing.

Motivational interviewing is a collaborative conversation between healthcare providers and their patient. Patients are encouraged to do most of the talking to allow the health care provider to understand their reasoning and thinking styles, not just their decisions. This approach could be a tool for health care providers of all types to speak with families with whom they've built relationships.

Cole, Chen and their School of Pharmacy team are partnering with the Rocking Horse Community Health Center in Springfield, Ohio, for the research. The center is a federally qualified health center and offers medical care to an underserved population. Serving the underserved is a goal of the Cedarville University School of Pharmacy.

"It is important for Cedarville University to engage in these kinds of studies because we value innovation in teaching, service and scholarship," said Cole. "We hope to answer health care questions and solve complex health care problems in novel ways."

Located in southwest Ohio, Cedarville University is an accredited, Christ-centered, Baptist institution with an enrollment of 4,193 undergraduate, graduate and online students in more than 150 areas of study. For more information about the University, visit www.cedarville.edu.

SOURCE Cedarville University

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