The Experience of VaccinarSinToscana Website and the Role of New Media in Promoting Vaccination.

The Department of Health Sciences (University of Florence) developed a regional website "VaccinarSinToscana" in order to provide information on vaccines and communicate with the general population, as well as the healthcare community, at a regional and local level. The aim of this paper is to present the VaccinarSinToscana website framework and analyze the three-year activity of the website and the related social network account on Facebook in terms of dissemination and visibility. In the first three years since its launch, the VaccinarSinToscana portal has increased its visibility: the number of single users, visits and single web pages has grown exponentially. Our results also demonstrate how the Facebook account launch contributed enormously to the increase in the visibility of the website. The objective for the future of the VaccinarSinToscana portal is to grow further, in order to reach out to an even wider audience.

Utility of Healthcare System-Based Interventions in Improving the Uptake of Influenza Vaccination in Healthcare Workers at Long-Term Care Facilities: A Systematic Review.

Healthcare workers (HCWs) in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) can represent a source of influenza infection for the elderly. While flu vaccination coverage (VC) is satisfactory in the elderly, HCWs are less likely to be vaccinated. There is no definitive evidence on which types of healthcare system-based interventions at LTCFs would be more useful in improving the vaccination uptake among HCWs. We performed a systematic review in different databases (Pubmed, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Health Evidence, Web of Science, Cinahl) to provide a synthesis of the available studies on this topic. Among the 1177 articles screened by their titles and abstracts, 27 were included in this review. Most of the studies reported multiple interventions addressed to improve access to vaccination, eliminate individual barriers, or introduce policy interventions. As expected, mandatory vaccinations seem to be the most useful intervention to increase the vaccination uptake in HCWs. However, our study suggests that better results in the vaccination uptake in HCWs were obtained by combining interventions in different areas. Educational campaigns alone could not have an impact on vaccination coverage. LTCFs represent an ideal setting to perform preventive multi-approach interventions for the epidemiological transition toward aging and chronicity.