GSA Blog

GSA's Office of Evaluation Sciences Partners with Agency Partners to Increase Vaccination Uptake

The Office of Evaluation Sciences (OES), based in the U.S. General Services Administration, recently collaborated with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Veterans Health Administration and state departments of health to build a portfolio of evidence regarding how low-cost program changes can improve vaccination rates.

One project conducted in collaboration with CMS and the HHS’ National Vaccine Program Office (NVPO) was able to significantly increase flu vaccination rates.  The project sent behaviorally-informed letters to 114,000 Medicare beneficiaries. All letters emphasized the risks of flu, encouraged the recipient to get vaccinated, and included the sender’s signature and picture. As a result, 673 additional Medicare beneficiaries received their flu vaccinations.

OES recently released results from seven large-scale randomized evaluations aiming to increase vaccination uptake, including the CMS and NVPO project, which was also recently published in Nature Human Behavior. The projects, developed and implemented with agency collaborators, use existing administrative data and apply insights from the behavioral sciences to the government context. The goal of each is to test the effect of promising interventions to encourage vaccination uptake among various populations, including the elderly, Veterans, pregnant women, school-age children, and Medicare beneficiaries.

OES will be presenting results from the vaccine portfolio, rapid cycle testing, and transparent evaluation on November 7 at GSA. To register, please visit oes.gsa.gov/events.

For more information about OES’s vaccine portfolio, please contact Pompa Debroy (pompa.debroy@gsa.gov).