Increasing Men's Engagement in Preventive Healthcare Through an Enhanced Cocoon Vaccination Strategy

The goal of this project is to understand whether the combination of vaccination access and connection to services tailored for men improves vaccination rates among men and engagement in healthcare. Additionally, this project aims to understand variations in effectiveness between low-touch and high-touch approaches. To achieve these goals, the project has two specific aims:

Aim 1: Assess the effectiveness of cocoon vaccination interventions on a continuum of minimum to high-touch in terms of vaccination completion and healthcare engagement. After refinement of the intervention materials and study materials based on engagement with community members, representatives of the priority population, interested parties including birthing parents, the initiative will roll out in three randomly timed clusters, one that includes bedside vaccinations, another that includes bedside vaccinations in addition to low-touch informational flyer, and a third that includes bedside vaccinations and high-touch connection to the UH Cutler Center for Men through the Joe Team. Vaccination completion will be assessed utilizing records from the Pharmacy department delivering the vaccinations. Male-identifying individuals will also be recruited and enrolled to complete two surveys, one at baseline and another four weeks after enrollment) to assess healthcare engagement.

Aim 2: Examine the factors that impact uptake of vaccination and healthcare engagement after a cocoon vaccination intervention. Factors that impact intervention uptake will be assessed through the two surveys and semi-structured interviews with a subsample of survey participants. Additionally, contextual factors related to the implementation of the intervention, such as hours of operation for high touch connections/vaccine distribution will be assessed. By understanding the factors that impact intervention uptake, we will assess the barriers and facilitators of this strategy.

Hypothesis. This pilot study will examine whether implementing a cocoon vaccination strategy that provides access to vaccinations and overall health education for men leads to increased uptake of vaccines and engagement in overall healthcare of male identifying support persons. Additionally, it will assess the factors that impact intervention uptake. We anticipate that vaccination rates and engagement with healthcare will be highest among male visitors at the Ahuja Medical Center who receive the vaccination offer at bedside and the high-touch healthcare navigation information relative to those who are only offered offered bedside vaccines only.