UKHSA’s Health and Justice team have worked with National Prison Radio to raise awareness of measles and the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine.
Measles in Prisons
Following the increase of measles cases in England in 2023, the UKHSA Health and Justice team wanted to try to reduce the risk of measles outbreaks in prisons in line with our priority to reduce the impact of infectious diseases.
Prisons are high-risk environments for outbreaks due to the crowded living environment, their frequent contact points with the community through staff and visitors, and the high number of prisoners with an unknown MMR vaccination history.
The Campaign
The Health and Justice team, with support from the Immunisations Team in UKHSA, worked with National Prison Radio (NPR) to run a three-month awareness campaign from November 2023. NPR is run by a charity working with prisoners and ex-prisoners as part of their rehabilitation to produce and broadcast radio programmes directly into cells in 108 of the 120 prisons in England and Wales.
The campaign featured four 30 second radio adverts covering:
- symptoms of measles
- transmission routes of infection
- myth busting
- vaccine hesitancy
The campaign also explored the same topics in more depth through a 51-minute programme featuring interviews with experts from our Vaccine Preventable Diseases Division and Regional Health Protection Team and a Head of Prison Healthcare.
The Results
NPR evaluated the reach and impact of the campaign through face-to-face interviews with 94 residents across three prisons (including one female prison).
The results were encouraging: 59% heard the MMR vaccine being spoken about on the radio and of those who heard it on the radio:
- 80% said that their knowledge and awareness of the MMR vaccine and measles had increased
- 46% were now more likely to seek support for measles or get the MMR vaccine (57% for female respondents)
- 27% had either been vaccinated or spoken to their healthcare team about vaccination
Some of the participants said it was a good idea to spread awareness in this way. One participant said:
“I spoke to my granddaughter and encouraged her to get it sorted - told her to speak to the nurse. Everyone should get the vaccine, it's so important.”
Encouraged by the results of the evaluation and due to continued increase of measles in the community, the Health and Justice team extended the campaign for a further three months, and they are now working on a further prison radio campaign about tuberculosis.
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