Social and racial/ethnic differences in parental willingness to vaccinate children against COVID-19 in Montreal, Canada

McKinnon, B.; Quach Thanh, C.; Dube, E.; Tuong Nguyen, C.; Zinszer, K.

Little is known about the extent of social or racial/ethnic differences in parental hesitancy around COVID-19 vaccination for their children. Using cross-sectional data from an ongoing cohort study in Montreal, Canada, we examined willingness to vaccinate children according to level of education, neighbourhood, and visible minority status. Parents of children aged 2-17 completed a vaccine hesitancy module of an online questionnaire and we used logistic regression to estimate associations between vaccine willingness and education, neighbourhood, and visible minority status. Of the 380 parents who completed the module, 61% were very likely, 25% somewhat likely, 9.2% somewhat unlikely, and 4.5% very unlikely to have their child vaccinated against COVID-19. Visible minority status was strongly associated with willingness to vaccinate, while neighbourhood and level of education were not significantly associated. Further research is needed to quantify these differences on a larger scale and to better understand why certain communities have lower vaccination intention in order to develop tailored strategies to promote vaccine acceptance and uptake.