TY - JOUR AU - Sumile, Earl Francis AU - Diric, John Howell AU - Dorado, Zariah Monica AU - Dumaua, Kate AU - Ecura, Monica Julia Ryven AU - Dumaya, Jose Maria PY - 2020/12/18 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Dengue Vaccine Controversy Awareness, Vaccine Health Literacy, and Vaccine Acceptability among Mothers in Select Rural Communities JF - Journal of Health and Caring Sciences JA - JHCS VL - 2 IS - 2 SE - ORIGINAL ARTICLE(S) DO - 10.37719/jhcs.2020.v2i2.oa005 UR - https://journalofhealthandcaringsciences.org/index.php/jhcs/article/view/58 SP - 123-134 AB - Background: Immunization is a vital public health service that reduces transmission of communicable diseases among population groups. In the Philippines, reports of adverse reaction from the dengue vaccine raised doubts about its safety and efficacy. This in turn can bring about a decline in vaccine acceptability among mothers and later on result to reduced vaccine coverage in the country.Methods: Descriptive cross-sectional correlational design were used to explicate the influence of dengue vaccine controversy awareness and vaccine health literacy on vaccine acceptability among mothers. Data were collected among 200 mothers from August – November 2018 in rural communities of Bulacan. Stepwise forward and backward multiple linear regression were done to determine the relationships between the variables of interest.Results: Majority of the mothers who participated belong to 26-35 year old age bracket and received basic education. Mothers’ functional health literacy (B=0.189, p=0.006) and critical health literacy (B=0.247, p=0.000) revealed a significant relationship to vaccine acceptability. However, the communicative health literacy (B=0.008, p=0.917) showed no significant relationship to vaccine acceptability. Moreover, the dengue vaccine controversy awareness (B=0.057, p=0.415) had no significant relationships to the mothers’ vaccine acceptability.Conclusion: Health literacy favorably influences vaccine acceptability. Likewise, awareness of controversies surrounding dengue vaccination is not a deterrent to the decision of mothers to continue submitting their children to immunization. Hence, nurses should invest more in educational interventions to promote compliance of communities to the national immunization program and engage stakeholders to support its implementation.  ER -