Other reasons cited included believing that their adolescent did not need the vaccine (14%), wanting to wait until he or she was older (10%), concerns about vaccine safety (9%), and not having been to a doctor recently (8%).
More than half of these parents of unvaccinated children said that in the next year, they definitely would (21%) or probably would (33%) have them vaccinated, and a small minority (8%) were unsure.
However, sizable proportions said they probably would not (29%) or definitely would not (10%) have their child vaccinated in the next year.
“Awareness of a vaccine doesn't necessarily mean that one will get it,” Dr. Coyne-Beasley concluded, and it will be important to ascertain the reasons for the observed disconnect between awareness and uptake of the meningococcal vaccine among adolescents.
The study had its limitations, she acknowledged. They included the self-reported nature of the data, potential limited generalizability, inclusion of only households having a landline telephone, and availability of just a single meningococcal conjugate vaccine at the time of the survey.
The leading reason for nonvaccination was that a health care provider did not mention or recommend the vaccine.
Source DR. COYNE-BEASLEY