COVID vaccine uptake at Minnesota workplace rose after $1,000 incentiveThe rate of full COVID-19 vaccination among employees of a private Minnesota medical device manufacturer rose 10.4 percentage points after the company began offering $1,000 incentives for immunization, finds a study published late last week in JAMA Network Open.Researchers from Starkey Hearing Technologies and the University of Minnesota studied COVID-19 vaccination outcomes at Starkey from the incentive period of Aug 6 to Sep 30, 2021.
Employees who agreed to watch and acknowledge an online educational program and show proof of two doses of an mRNA vaccine received $1,000 in October.Data, including the vaccine brand and dates of each dose, were entered into a human resources database and combined with information on employee age, salary band, sex, and race.By Sep 30, 2,055 of 2,099 (97.9%) workers eligible for the incentive reported their vaccination status.
Of the 2,055 employees, 54.7% were women, 75.5% were White, 12.5% were Asian, and 6.8% were Hispanic.Before the incentive was offered, 75.7% of employees were fully vaccinated against COVID-19, a figure that rose to 86.1% after, for a 10.4 percentage-point increase.
Of 500 employees who had received one or no vaccine doses before, 42.8% were fully vaccinated by study end.In the weeks leading up to the incentive announcement, rates of employees receiving their first and second vaccine doses were flat.