Digital Storytelling to Reduce Hispanic Parents’ COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a well-written manuscript exploring the use of digital storytelling in trying to persuade parents to vaccinate their children.

My main concern is a discrepancy in the method and the results which was not clear from the text. The material and method states that participants should be “self-identify as Hispanic” and “had one or more vaccine eligible children aged 6 months to 17 years old who had not received the COVID-19 vaccine”. But the description of the 40+40 Phase II sample states that only 91% identified as Hispanic (or Latino) and half of them (48.8%) were vaccinated. Only 20 and 15 were not vaccinated at all, the rest got some of the COVID-19 vaccines. This seems at odd with the aim of the study. Also, some of the caregivers of those not vaccinated expressed intention to vaccinate their children. Please explain this and how does it affect the results. Why had you not searched for 40-40 parents with unvaccinated children? Also, could the different number of really vaccine hesitant caregivers (no intention to vaccinate) in the intervention and control samples drive the results? Did their opinion change?

Please also explain the difference between this manuscript and the one in PLOS ONE (Protocol for a community-based digital storytelling pilot intervention to reduce Hispanic parents’ vaccine hesitancy to immunize their children against COVID-19).

You might also want to consider discussing the following papers:

Dunlap, A.F., Ciari, A., Islam, N. et al. Using Digital Storytelling and Social Media to Combat COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: A Public Service Social Marketing Campaign. J of Prevention 45, 947–955 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10935-024-00799-7

Williams et al. Staff and caregivers' perceptions of digital storytelling to increase influenza vaccine confidence in an urban safety-net healthcare system. Vaccine 45: 126572 (2025) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2024.126572

 

Minor comments:

Please avoid abbreviations. They are not necessary and only add to confusion. The abbreviated phrases are not difficult and not particularly long, nor they are well-established in the literature. Abbreviating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as CDC is fine, this is a well-established abbreviation. But abbreviating digital storytelling as DST only adds to confusion. A quick google search confirms that it can also mean “dexamethasone suppression test” and Dst is an index in geophysics. TPB and CHW are also used frequently, but I would still not abbreviate them to avoid confusion.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) only appears once, when it is defined.

Community Advisory Board (CAB) is used 5 times (including the definition). Four of these mentions are in the same paragraphs.

Information control (IC) is only used two times after definition, both of them in the same paragraph.

Figure 1 has very small fonts. Consider enlarging them. The boxes can accommodate the larger text.

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Overall, I think this discussion is very valuable. Parental concerns and hesitancy about vaccinations are a problem in many countries, and the impact of various interventions on changing people's behavior should be studied.

The methodology is well described.

However, the results lack a clear understanding of the impact of the intervention on parents' opinions and behaviors, such as how many parents were initially hesitant and to what extent (and why), and how many changed their minds after the intervention. This isn't entirely clear to the reader.

Furthermore, the discussion should be enriched. There are many tools for surveying opinions on vaccinations. A very popular scale is the VAX scale. I don't know why the authors didn't use it. (?) But in the Discussion section, they could compare different tools and different results for different scales. They could also refer more closely to other studies. They could discuss opinions and the reasons behind them.

On a technical note, the abbreviations and symbols used in the tables should be explained below.

Thank you.

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx