The Association between Types of COVID-19 Information Source and the Avoidance of Child Health Checkups in Japan: Findings from the JACSIS 2021 Study

Masafumi Ojio; Yuto Maeda; Takahiro Tabuchi; Takeo Fujiwara

doi:10.3390/ijerph19159720

The Association between Types of COVID-19 Information Source and the Avoidance of Child Health Checkups in Japan: Findings from the JACSIS 2021 Study

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Aug 7;19(15):9720. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19159720.

Authors

Masafumi Ojio¹, Yuto Maeda¹, Takahiro Tabuchi², Takeo Fujiwara¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Global Health Promotion, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo 113-8519, Japan.
² Cancer Control Center, Osaka International Cancer Institute, Osaka 541-8567, Japan.

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic can affect children's well-being through mothers' avoidance of health checkups for children due to media portrayal of the disease. This study investigated the association between the type of information source for COVID-19 received by mothers and the avoidance of their children's health checkups. The study was an online-based survey, and the participants comprised 5667 postpartum women with children aged under 2 years during the study period. We analyzed the analytic sample and three groups of women with children aged 0-3 months, 4-6 months, and 6 months or older according to the timing of children's health checkups in Japan. Among the participants, 382 women (6.7%) avoided their children's health checkups. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that mothers with children over 6 months who used magazines as an information source about COVID-19 tended to avoid their children's health checkups (adjusted odds ratio (aOR): 3.19; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.68-6.05) compared with those who did not. In contrast, those using public websites were less likely to avoid their children's health checkups (aOR 0.58, 95% CI 0.43-0.77). This study showed that specific types of information source on COVID-19 could have varying effects on mothers' decisions about their children's health checkups.

Keywords: COVID-19; avoidance; child health checkup; fear; information source; pandemic.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, N.I.H., Intramural

MeSH terms

COVID-19* / epidemiology
Child
Child Health
Female
Humans
Japan / epidemiology
Mothers
Pandemics

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI Grant (grant number JP 21H04856); the Japan Science and Technology Agency (grant number JPMJSC21U6); the Intramural fund of the National Institute for Environmental Studies; the Innovative Research Program on Suicide Countermeasures (grant number: R3-2-2); and the Ready for COVID-19 Relief Fund (grant number: 5th period 2nd term 001). The funding body had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data; or in writing the manuscript.