Poster Sample: Evaluating a Campus Vaccine Uptake Campaign

Type: Academic Poster  |  Subject: Public Health  |  Level: Masters  |  Word Count: ~1000 words

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The Brief

Produce an academic poster evaluating a university influenza-vaccination uptake campaign, reporting uptake before and after the campaign and the barriers students report to vaccination, for a Masters Public Health Programme Evaluation poster assessment.

Evaluating a Campus Influenza-Vaccination Uptake Campaign

E. Marchetti, Department of Public Health, University of Caldermoor

Introduction & Aims

Seasonal influenza vaccination uptake among university students is typically low compared with other adult groups, leaving crowded halls of residence and shared teaching spaces vulnerable to outbreaks that can disrupt attendance during a busy teaching term. National guidance encourages higher-education providers to extend seasonal vaccination access to students, yet many campuses rely on a single off-campus GP route, which students report as inconvenient during term time. A campaign combining pop-up clinics, peer-led messaging and SMS reminder texts was introduced across one campus for the current season in response to this gap.

Low student uptake is a recognised concern for higher-education providers because it has knock-on effects for staff and campus services, not only for the students directly affected: a cluster of cases in a shared hall of residence can spread quickly through communal kitchens and social spaces, and can also disrupt placements for students on healthcare and education courses who must meet occupational health requirements.

This poster evaluates the campaign against two aims: to determine whether uptake increased relative to the prior season, when no comparable campaign ran, and to identify the barriers students most commonly report for not attending, so that future campaigns can be targeted more effectively.

Methods

• Design: a before-after service evaluation combined with a cross-sectional student survey, conducted with institutional public health approval.
• Uptake data: vaccination register counts for eligible students in the prior season (no campaign) and the current season (campaign), covering a comparable six-week autumn window in each year to control for seasonal timing.
• Campaign components: three pop-up clinics in high-footfall campus locations, peer-led social media and poster messaging, and a personalised SMS reminder sent two weeks and again two days before each clinic date.
• Survey: an online questionnaire distributed to all registered students (n = 245 respondents; 12% response rate) asking unvaccinated students to select their single main reason for not attending, drawn from a short list of common barriers identified in a brief pilot round.
• Ethics and governance: the evaluation was registered with the university’s public health team as a service evaluation, and survey responses were collected anonymously with no individually identifiable data retained.
• Confounding check: term dates, teaching timetables and campus footfall patterns were broadly comparable between the two seasons, reducing the likelihood that external scheduling differences alone explained the uptake change.
• Analysis: a chi-square test compared uptake proportions between seasons; barrier responses were summarised as percentages of respondents.

Results

Uptake rose from 27.0% in the prior season to 41.0% following the campaign, a statistically significant increase, χ²(1) = 84.6, p < .001, representing 283 additional students vaccinated relative to the uptake rate seen the previous year. As shown in Figure 1, time constraints were reported by an estimated 38% of unvaccinated respondents, needle anxiety by 22%, uncertainty about where to attend by 19% and doubts about personal need by 14%, with the remaining 7% citing other reasons. Uptake gains were broadly similar across first-year and returning students, suggesting the campaign’s effect was not confined to any single year group.

Discussion

The 14 percentage-point rise in uptake is consistent with wider evidence that convenience-focused, multi-component campaigns combining access, reminders and social messaging outperform single-channel reminders alone. The scale of the increase also suggests that a meaningful proportion of previously unvaccinated students were not opposed to vaccination in principle but were deterred chiefly by practical access barriers rather than by low perceived need.

Time and access barriers remained prominent even after the campaign, suggesting further gains may depend on extending clinic opening hours around lecture and seminar timetables, rather than on messaging volume alone. Needle anxiety, the second most common barrier, was not directly addressed by any campaign component and may warrant a targeted response, such as offering a quieter clinic slot or trained staff experienced in supporting anxious patients. As a single-campus, single-season evaluation without a randomised comparison, the design cannot fully rule out other concurrent factors, such as national media coverage of flu severity, contributing to the uptake increase. A formal cost-per-additional-vaccination analysis was not conducted here but would help justify the resourcing of pop-up clinics in future budget planning, particularly if the model is extended to a second campus.

Beyond the immediate uptake increase, embedding vaccination clinics within routine campus life may also help normalise preventive health behaviours more broadly, a pattern noted in comparable campus-based health-promotion literature, though this evaluation was not designed to test that broader claim directly.

Conclusion

• The campaign was associated with a statistically significant increase in campus flu-vaccination uptake compared with the prior season.
• Time constraints and needle anxiety remain the principal reported barriers among students who did not attend a clinic.
• Embedding pop-up clinics in high-footfall locations around teaching timetables, alongside SMS reminders, is recommended for future seasons.
• A targeted response to needle anxiety, such as a dedicated low-stimulation clinic slot, should be piloted and evaluated next season.
• A cost-per-additional-vaccination analysis is recommended for future seasons to support the business case for continued or expanded clinic provision.

Key References: Nichol (2001, Vaccine); Betsch, Bohm & Chapman (2015, Vaccine); Public Health England (2019, Seasonal Flu Guidance); Norris et al. (2013, Journal of American College Health).

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