Background Pregnant women, foetuses and infants are at risk of infectious disease-related complications. Maternal vaccination is a strategy developed to better protect pregnant women and their offspring against infectious disease-related morbidity and mortality. Vaccines against influenza, pertussis and recently also COVID-19 are widely recommended for pregnant women. Yet, there is still a significant amount of hesitation towards maternal vaccination policies. Furthermore, contradictory messages circulating social media impact vaccine confidence. Objectives This scoping review aims to reveal how COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccination impacted vaccine confidence in pregnant and lactating women. Additionally, this review studied the role social media plays in creating opinions towards vaccination in these target groups. Eligibility criteria Articles published between 23 November 2018 and 18 July 2022 that are linked to the objectives of this review were included. Reviews, articles not focusing on the target group, abstracts, articles describing outcomes of COVID-19 infection/COVID-19 vaccination were excluded. Sources of evidence The PubMed database was searched to select articles. Search terms used were linked to pregnancy, lactation, vaccination, vaccine hesitancy, COVID-19 and social media. Charting methods Included articles were abstracted and synthesised by one reviewer. Verification was done by a second reviewer. Disagreements were addressed through discussion between reviewers and other researchers. Results Pregnant and lactating women are generally less likely to accept a COVID-19 vaccine compared with non-pregnant and non-nursing women. The main reason to refuse maternal vaccination is safety concerns. A positive link was detected between COVID-19 vaccine willingness and acceptance of other vaccines during pregnancy. The internet and social media are identified as important information sources for maternal vaccination. Discussion and conclusion Vaccine hesitancy in pregnant and lactating women remains an important issue, expressing the need for effective interventions to increase vaccine confidence and coverage. The role social media plays in vaccine uptake remains unclear.

Background: Chatbots are increasingly used to support COVID-19 vaccination programs. Their persuasiveness may depend on the conversation-related context. Objective: This study aims to investigate the moderating role of the conversation quality and chatbot expertise cues in the effects of expressing empathy/autonomy support using COVID-19 vaccination chatbots. Methods: This experiment with 196 Dutch-speaking adults living in Belgium, who engaged in a conversation with a chatbot providing vaccination information, used a 2 (empathy/autonomy support expression: present vs absent) × 2 (chatbot expertise cues: expert endorser vs layperson endorser) between-subject design. Chatbot conversation quality was assessed through actual conversation logs. Perceived user autonomy (PUA), chatbot patronage intention (CPI), and vaccination intention shift (VIS) were measured after the conversation, coded from 1 to 5 (PUA, CPI) and from –5 to 5 (VIS). Results: There was a negative interaction effect of chatbot empathy/autonomy support expression and conversation fallback (CF; the percentage of chatbot answers “I do not understand” in a conversation) on PUA (PROCESS macro, model 1, B=–3.358, SE 1.235, t186=2.718, P=.007). Specifically, empathy/autonomy support expression had a more negative effect on PUA when the CF was higher (conditional effect of empathy/autonomy support expression at the CF level of +1SD: B=–.405, SE 0.158, t186=2.564, P=.011; conditional effects nonsignificant for the mean level: B=–0.103, SE 0.113, t186=0.914, P=.36; conditional effects nonsignificant for the –1SD level: B=0.031, SE=0.123, t186=0.252, P=.80). Moreover, an indirect effect of empathy/autonomy support expression on CPI via PUA was more negative when CF was higher (PROCESS macro, model 7, 5000 bootstrap samples, moderated mediation index=–3.676, BootSE 1.614, 95% CI –6.697 to –0.102; conditional indirect effect at the CF level of +1SD: B=–0.443, BootSE 0.202, 95% CI –0.809 to –0.005; conditional indirect effects nonsignificant for the mean level: B=–0.113, BootSE 0.124, 95% CI –0.346 to 0.137; conditional indirect effects nonsignificant for the –1SD level: B=0.034, BootSE 0.132, 95% CI –0.224 to 0.305). Indirect effects of empathy/autonomy support expression on VIS via PUA were marginally more negative when CF was higher. No effects of chatbot expertise cues were found. Conclusions: The findings suggest that expressing empathy/autonomy support using a chatbot may harm its evaluation and persuasiveness when the chatbot fails to answer its users’ questions. The paper adds to the literature on vaccination chatbots by exploring the conditional effects of chatbot empathy/autonomy support expression. The results will guide policy makers and chatbot developers dealing with vaccination promotion in designing the way chatbots express their empathy and support for user autonomy.

Hepatitis B is preventable and hepatitis C is treatable even if still at a high cost; most people who are infected with hepatitis B or C virus have not been screened yet and are unaware of their infections; and most countries, especially developing countries, do not have a national plan to prevent and control viral hepatitis. The advent of effective new treatments for hepatitis C has been an agent of change, allowing consideration of the feasibility of eliminating that disease and accelerating the control of viral hepatitis generally. These facts inspired the Viral Hepatitis Prevention Board (VHPB) to organize a meeting in London (8–9 June 2015) on innovative sources for funding of viral hepatitis prevention and treatment in low- and middle-income countries. The main focus of the meeting was to provide an overview of current health systems controlling viral hepatitis in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs); to identify ways to increase political commitment and financial sustainability of viral hepatitis prevention and control programmes in such countries; to identify potential funders and explore new funding mechanisms; to discuss lessons learnt about funding other disease programmes; to investigate how to convince and motivate decision-makers to fund viral hepatitis programmes in LMICs; to provide options for improving access to affordable screening and treatment of viral hepatitis in LMICs; and to list the commitments required for funding by donors, including governments, bilateral and multilateral organizations, non-traditional donors, development banks, foundations, and commercial financial institutions. To improve viral hepatitis prevention and treatment in LMICs participating hepatitis and financing experts identified the most urgent needs. Data on burden of disease must be improved. Comprehensive hepatitis policies and strategies should be drafted and implemented, and existing strategies and policies improved to increase access to treatment and prevention. Strong political will and leadership should be generated, potential partners identified and partnerships created. Potential funders and funding mechanisms have to be researched. The outcome of this meeting was integrated in a VHPB project to investigate creative financing solutions to expand access to and provision of screening and other preventive services, treatment and care of hepatitis B and C in LMICs. The report is available on www.vhpb.org .