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Letters
Views towards compulsory MMR vaccination in the UK
  1. Benjamin Gardner,
  2. John McAteer,
  3. Anna Davies,
  4. Susan Michie
  1. Centre for Outcomes Research and Effectiveness, Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Health Behaviour Research Centre, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, 1-19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 7HB, UK; b.gardner{at}ucl.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/adc.2009.169813

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    Annual increments in measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination coverage in England have halted, with uptake rates (mean 85%) remaining below the 95% rate needed for herd immunity.1 Some commentators have called for vaccination to be made compulsory, or otherwise heavily incentivised. Two schemes were recently debated in the UK press: MMR vaccination as a requirement for school entry (a form of “compulsory vaccination”),2 or the withholding of welfare payments from parents of non-vaccinated children (“incentivised vaccination”).3

    Intervention effectiveness is partly determined by acceptability among target populations. We explored views towards these two schemes among (A) parents of …

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    Footnotes

    • Funding The study was funded by the National Social Marketing Centre, UK. The funder contributed to the design of the study but was not involved in interpreting findings or drafting the manuscript.

    • Competing interests None.

    • Ethics approval Ethical approval for focus groups with parents was granted by the University College London Psychology Department Ethics Committee (STF/2007/8/007). Clearance for interviews with health visitors was given by an NHS Research Ethics Committee (08/H0716/22).

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.