# Effect of short message service delivered health education messages on parental barriers to childhood immunisation in Borno State, Nigeria: a quasi-experimental study

## TL;DR

This study shows that sending health education messages via SMS to parents in Nigeria significantly reduced barriers to childhood immunization.

## Contribution

The study demonstrates the effectiveness of SMS-based health education in reducing parental barriers to immunization in Nigeria.

## Key findings

- SMS health education significantly reduced total barriers to parental immunization (p-value = 0.001).
- The intervention significantly reduced access and importance barriers (p-value = 0.001).
- Parental concern barriers decreased but were not statistically significant (p-value = 0.055).

## Abstract

In Nigeria, barriers to immunisation such as myths and misconceptions arising from belief, lack of knowledge and social or family influence exist. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of Short Message Service (SMS) delivered health education messages on barriers to childhood immunization in Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria.

The study is a pre-and-post-test quasi-experimental study conducted among 262 parents of infants in Maiduguri, Nigeria. One SMS-delivered health education message was sent to parents of infants one week to the immunisation date for the 6th, 10th, and 14th-week immunization schedule. The immunisation fact messages were adapted from UNICEF and translated to Hausa language. At baseline and endline, the Searching for Hardship to Shots (SHOT) survey questionnaire was administered to determine barriers to immunization. Data collected were analysed using Wilcoxon signed rank test. The results were significant if the p-value was <0.05 at a 95% confidence interval.

Findings of the study indicate that overall, SMS delivered health education significantly (p-value = 0.001) reduced total barrier to parental immunization. Additionally, interventions significantly reduce access and importance (p-value = 0.001) barriers, although barriers regarding parental concern was reduced, it was however, not statistically significant (p-value = 0.055).

The study affirms the important role of mobile communication health technology in improving outcome of immunization in Nigeria.