Effect of mobile phone text message reminders on improving completeness and timeliness of routine childhood vaccinations in North-West, Ethiopia: a study protocol for randomised controlled trial

Abstract

Introduction Non-attendance and delay in vaccination schedules remain a big challenge to healthcare workers. With the continuous growth of mobile network coverage and exponential penetration of mobile devices in the developing world, adoption of short message service has been shown to increase attendance for health services by targeting participant characteristics such as forgetfulness. Therefore, the aim of this trial is to determine the effect of mobile text message reminders on completeness and timeliness of childhood vaccination in North-West, Ethiopia.

Methods and analysis A two-arm, parallel, superiority, randomised controlled trial study will be employed. The study arms are the intervention group (text message reminders plus routine care) and the control group (routine care only). Mother- infant pairs will be randomised to one of the groups during enrolment. The trial will consider a sample size of 434 mother-infant pairs with 1:1 allocation ratio. Mothers assigned to the intervention group will receive text message reminder 1 day before the scheduled vaccination visit at 6 weeks, 10 weeks, 14 weeks and at 9 months. Initially, descriptive statistics will be computed. For the primary outcome log-binomial regression model will be used to identify associated factors, and relative risk with 95% CI will be reported. Primarily, ilntention-to-treat analysis principle will be applied. STATA V.14 software will be used for the analysis.