Behavioural change and health

The Covid pandemic has yielded new insights into psychological vaccine acceptance factors. This knowledge serves as a basis for behavioral and communication interventions that can increase vaccination readiness for other diseases.

Understanding collective behaviour is an important aspect of managing the pandemic response. Here the authors show in a large global study that participants that reported identifying more strongly with their nation reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies in the context of the pandemic.

The authors show that accurate information about descriptive norms can increase intentions to accept a vaccine for COVID-19. They show that these effects are largely consistent in the 23 included countries and are concentrated among people who were otherwise uncertain about accepting a vaccine.

Understanding factors associated with COVID-19 vaccine uptake in an evolving pandemic context is important for future vaccine campaigns. Here, the authors investigate the main drivers of vaccine hesitancy in Hong Kong at different stages of the pandemic, where uptake was initially low despite high availability.

Oyake et al. survey patients with neurological and orthopedic disorders undergoing inpatient rehabilitation and the medical practitioners treating them about motivational factors. Whilst there are some differences, the most frequent motivational factors are shared across both patients and medical practitioners.

Koher et al. use Bayesian analysis to evaluate the usefulness of survey responses compared to mobility data as a tool to monitor the effects of lockdown as a disease mitigation strategy. Self-reported contacts during lockdown better predict future hospitalizations than mobility data.