ISPOR NZ webinar - Dr Austin Henderson
- ispornewzealand
- Aug 5
- 2 min read
Associations between Parents’ Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination and Child COVID-19 Vaccination in American Indian and Alaska Native Peoples
Wednesday 20 August, 1pm
We are delighted to welcome Dr Austin Henderson (Department of Economics, University of Otago) to present our next ISPOR NZ webinar: Associations between Parents’ Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination and Child COVID-19 Vaccination in American Indian and Alaska Native Peoples.
The webinar will be held via Zoom at 1pm on Wednesday 20 August. To register, please complete the form on this page.
Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools and workplaces implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Despite their important public health implications, the wider potential effects of these policies remain inadequately understood. Limited data exists on vaccination rates among American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) parents and children, as well as the factors effecting vaccination decisions among AI/AN families.
This study, conducted with a geographically diverse AI/AN sample (N=578 parents of children ages 5-18), investigates whether the children of parents who received a COVID-19 vaccine due to mandates in the workplace or at school had higher rates of vaccination when compared to the children of unvaccinated parents.
We found that the children of parents who reported they were vaccinated due to a mandate had a 45-percentage point (95% CI: 36%, 55%) higher probability of being vaccinated than children of unvaccinated parents. These findings were consistent when using both logistic regression or nearest-neighbor matching methods; the results were not sensitive to including education, household income, marital status, or essential work status.
Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that vaccine mandates lead to positive spillovers on child vaccination rates.
About the speaker
Dr Henderson is a behavioural and health economist with a focus on identifying scalable interventions to improve public health and health equity.
Prior to joining the University of Otago in 2025, Dr Henderson was a Research Assistant Professor at the Washington State University Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, where he worked extensively on programs related to health in American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities. In particular, Dr Henderson was the senior health economist on a large National Institutes of Health funded study of COVID-19 among AI/AN peoples and has authored numerous manuscripts assessing the relationships among COVID-19 infection, job loss, and the social determinants of health, among other topics.
Dr Henderson's research interests include cash transfer programs, Indigenous food sovereignty, the social determinants of health, and healthy aging.
Comments