A school-based intervention of screening a movie to increase hepatitis B vaccination levels among students in Uttar Pradesh, India: impact on knowledge, awareness, attitudes and vaccination levels.

Background: India is home to one in 14 of all chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) cases, meaning that it is important to develop HBV interventions that are applicable in the Indian context. Vaccination is the foremost tool for interrupting the HBV infection cycle. HBV vaccination was not included in India's government-sponsored expanded immunisation program until 2011, and many children born earlier remain unvaccinated. This study sought to observe the impact of the HOPE Initiative's school-based intervention to increase vaccination coverage by increasing HBV awareness among students in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.

Methods: At 430 schools in the administrative areas within and surrounding Lucknow, students viewed an educational documentary film on HBV and completed two questionnaires, one immediately before the screening and the other six weeks later. Both questionnaires asked the same 14 questions, which were organized into five domains: knowledge of the magnitude of the problem of HBV; knowledge of modes of HBV transmission; knowledge of consequences of HBV infection; awareness of HBV; and attitudes regarding HBV. The baseline questionnaire also asked students whether they had been vaccinated against HBV. At two-year follow-up, researchers measured vaccination levels at a subset of 30 intervention schools and six non-intervention schools to further assess the impact of the intervention.

Results: Baseline questionnaires were completed by 11,250 students, and post-intervention questionnaires, by 9698 students. Scores for knowledge about the magnitude of the HBV problem improved from 41% at baseline to 74% at follow-up, and scores for knowledge about modes of transmission, from 38% to 75% (p < 0.05 for both). The baseline HBV vaccination level among students receiving the intervention was 21%. Two years after the intervention, 45% of students (N = 4284) reported being vaccinated at intervention schools compared to 22% (N = 1264) at non-intervention schools.

Conclusions: The observed increases in HBV awareness, knowledge and vaccination levels in this study indicate that school-based interventions can be used to achieve higher vaccination coverage among Indian children. The documentary film was found to be an affordable tool for reaching large audiences. More studies are needed to validate the impact of this intervention and to explore its applicability to other social causes.