A couple of weeks ago, we sent out a survey asking you the various parts of Voices for Vaccines. While this survey is far from scientific, it does reveal some of VFV’s strengths and some ways we need to reintroduce ourselves to you.

It turns out that, among those surveyed, people often only have one way of interacting with Voices for Vaccines. Over 70% of respondents visit our Facebook page frequently or often, while only 34% of them are reading our e-newsletters that often. And disappointingly, almost 40% of respondants didn’t realize that we offer free toolkits or that we hold monthly phone calls. Respondents found these resources useful at rates that mirrored the frequency with which they used them, so our opportunity here is not to make better resources, but to connect more people to them.

Let’s go through these resources, what you think of them, and how we are all going to move forward.

Newsletters

The good news: people who read them, like them. Some providers suggested more provider-specific information in them. We will work on making newsletters both provider and parent friendly.

The bad news: not enough people are actually signed up for the newsletters, and some of those who are signed up miss them. The solution here is simple.

• Become a member. Doing so automatically signs you up for our newsletter.
• You may be missing our newsletters if you are a Gmail user and do not check your Promotions folder often. Please move us from your Promotions folder to your Primary folder.
• Others may be missing our newsletters because, until June 2014, they were only sent out once a month.  We are now sending them out twice a month and making them shorter, so our most important updates are easier to find.

Social Media and Parents Who Vax blog

The good news: You like us! You really, really like us!

The bad news: Not much. Most people don’t realize we have a Pinterest page, which is fine since most people don’t do much Pinterest anyhow. One respondent recommended that people go to our Facebook page and mark the “Get Notifications” option, which is a good idea for frequent social media users.

Monthly Conference Calls

The good news: Many people enjoy our monthly conference calls, find the topics interesting, and use the information they learn from them.

The bad news: Almost half of respondants didn’t realize we held conference calls, and many people commented that they were disappointed that they often were unable to participate in conference calls. We have a few solutions.

• Become a member. You will receive our twice-monthly newsletter alerting you to these conference calls.
• Check our Facebook page for our events.  We list our calls there, as well.
• Know that you are always invited to our calls.  Our calls are for everyone.

If you miss a call, we archive our calls on our Google page. You can always access this page at the top of our Tools page, if you lose the link.

Toolkits

The good news: A quarter of those surveyed felt our toolkits covered important topics. We are always open to creating toolkits around the topics you’d like to see, too!  Just email us.

The bad news: Nearly 40% had no idea we had toolkits. Here’s what you need to know about these toolkits

• We offer toolkits for free. They help you advocate in your community, no matter who you are.
• Our latest toolkit, the Parent Advocate toolkit, allows anyone to host an educational event around the topic of on-time immunization. It has everything you need to plan the event and includes a powerpoint presentation (also available in video form for the shy). If you are a provider or coalition, we’d love to have you invite a parent from your community to present the toolkit at an event you could host.

Speaking of providers and toolkits, one provider commented that it would be nice if we offered hand-outs for providers (or schools or public health clinics or whomever) that they could print out and distribute as needed. We loved this idea so much that we acted on it. Download our fact sheets, and see our healthcare provider toolkit.

Information on respondents

133 people initially responded to our survey. We eliminated incomplete surveys (a number of people only completed the first question) and surveys from people who were clearly anti-vaccine and were using the survey to express their displeasure at our existence.

More than 80% of respondents come from the United States or Canada, with the remaining coming from Australia, United Kingdom, Asia, Africa, and Europe (not UK). None of the respondents came from Antarctica.

Thank you for all who took the time to provide us with this valuable feedback. We would also like to thank all of our members, however they connect with us, for being advocates for children’s health. Please help us spread the word about what we do.  And if you appreciate what we do, please consider giving us a donation to help us with our work.

Karen Ernst is one of the parent-leaders of Voices for Vaccines.