Original ResearchIncreasing Immunization Adherence Among Infants of Low-income Parents: The Effects of Visually Enhanced Education

- The intervention examines use of pictures of children with vaccine-preventable diseases and verbal education (visually enhanced education, VEE) as a means to increase age-specific immunization adherence.
- The theory of multimedia proposes that learners who are educated through pictures and words will embed information in their memory for future use.
- The analysis demonstrates visually enhanced education had a significant effect on age-specific immunization adherence.
- The intervention of using pictures to increase age-specific immunization adherence should be tested in other populations (middle class and upper class), a more diverse population, larger samples, using additional pictures (measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella) for a longer time period (past 24 months of age) with random assignment.

Many children do not receive their recommended immunizations in a timely manner. In this study we compare a visually enhanced educational (VEE) intervention to usual care (UC) among infants of low-income parents. Parents in the intervention group (n = 40) received VEE, whereas control group participants (n = 40) received UC. Adherence (yes/no) to the recommended immunization schedule measured and the VEE group was significantly more adherent to the recommended immunization schedule at 2 (P = .014), 4 (P = .041), and 6 (P = .042) months compared with the control group. Using VEE may increase adherence to the recommended immunization schedule.