Social media could be key to vaccinating older generation, study shows

Social media advertising could be a cost-effective of way of encouraging older people in deprived communities to get vaccinated, new research shows.

Research from the International Longevity Centre-UK (ILC) found that targeting older users directly on social media can be a more effective way of encouraging them to get vaccinated compared to using younger relatives to convince them.

ILC conducted a large-scale target social media campaign to test whether or not older people were less likely to use social media and how they would engage with a vaccination campaign. ILC’s campaign aimed to find out whether social media could be used to engage older people via their younger relatives using a large-scale targeted social media advertising campaign. ILCs campaign reached over a million people and generated over 5 million impressions.

Through these campaigns, ILC was able to cost-effectively encourage marginalised older adults to get their flu jab. For the pneumococcal vaccine, the campaigns had an even greater impact and cost less than a third of the price per booking link click than the flu adverts – most likely because many people had already received the flu vaccine, while the pneumococcal vaccine was relatively unknown.

ILC are now calling for the government and NHS to invest more in targeted social media campaign to improve vaccination uptake. ILC is also arguing for the NHS to make it easier for people to access information on vaccination and the vaccines themselves through the use of community pharmacies and a single online hub where people can book routine vaccination appointments.

Sophia Dimitriadis, senior economist at ILC and lead researcher on the project, said: “Social media often gets a bad rep, especially surrounding the disinformation and fake news it can be used to spread. But we’ve shown that social media has huge potential when it comes to immunisation –including for people living in deprived communities, who are typically hard to reach through the traditional healthcare system.

"And yet, there is so much untapped potential still left to unlock. Our campaigns generated more engagement and at a cheaper rate than the average healthcare industry advert. Social media should become part of our arsenal for promoting and protecting public health.”

Did You Know:

•In a World Health Organisation (WHO) study of 23,500 people, 43.9% of respondents said they would likely share “scientific” content on social media.

•More than half (59.1%) said they were aware of “fake news” surrounding Covid-19.

•The top concern for respondents was the risk of friends and family catching Covid-19