There is a link between higher COVID-19 vaccination rates and the number of primary care physicians per 100,000 people, according to a new study published in JAMA Network Open.
The authors found that among more than 2,500 U.S. counties, PCPs were mostly located in the Northeast, Florida, and numerous counties in the Midwest and west. Those regions were also associated with higher vaccination rates, the authors reported recently.
Additionally, every 10 additional PCPs per 100,000 people was associated with a 0.3% higher vaccination rate. Further analysis revealed that a sizeable percentage of the unvaccinated population would be more likely to get vaccinated if they had easier access to accurate information and received encouragement from a trusted source, such as a PCP.
“Our findings suggest that PCPs play a critical role in ensuring vaccine acceptance, especially in resource-limited and vaccine-hesitant regions, potentially through counseling and building local community trust and partnerships before they had access to vaccines,” lead author, Chun-Han Lo, MD, MPH, with the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and colleagues wrote.
In the analysis, counties in the highest decile of the number of PCPs per 100,000 population were linked with a 5.5% higher vaccination rate compared to counties in the lowest decile.
Researchers examined 2,739 counties in the U.S. as of Aug. 23, 2021, for their findings.
The authors observed similar positive ties between the number of PCPs per 100,000 population and vaccination rates in rural areas, or those with less than 2,500 urban population and in the 10 states with the highest share of Republican voters.
Lo et al. noted that the study was limited by the accuracy of COVID-19 vaccine administration data, potential unmeasured confounders associated with the number of PCPs per capita and vaccination rates, among other difficulties.
“This study’s results provide support for expanding COVID-19 vaccine distribution to PCPs. Although fully incorporating PCPs into vaccination campaigns poses many challenges, PCPs may leverage their role as trusted messengers of scientific knowledge and educate communities about the importance of vaccination,” the authors concluded.
Read the full study here.