Ohio Lottery Did Not Increase COVID-19 Vaccination Rates: Study!

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Patch.com, By Chris Mosby, Posted July 22nd 2021

A new study says Ohio’s Vax-a-Million lottery did not have a significant impact on COVID-19 vaccination rates.

The Vax-a-Million lottery did not significantly impact Ohio’s COVID-19 vaccination rates, according to a new study from Boston University.

Reports of increasing vaccination rates following Gov. Mike DeWine’s announcement of the lottery were likely the result of expanding eligibility to people younger than 16, the study concluded.

The study’s authors used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to compare vaccination rates in Ohio and other states, in people 18 and older, before and after the Ohio lottery. Researchers tried to account for other factors that might have increased vaccination rates, including expanding vaccine eligibility to younger people.

“Our results suggest that state-based lotteries are of limited value in increasing vaccine uptake. Therefore, the resources devoted to vaccine lotteries may be more successfully invested in programs that target underlying reasons for vaccine hesitancy and low vaccine uptake,” said corresponding author Dr. Allan J. Walkey, professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine.

The researchers did argue that interventions that “can successfully increase COVID-19 vaccination rates” are important for furthering public health. Though, those strategies must be examined before they are duplicated widely, they noted.

“It is important to rigorously evaluate strategies designed to increase vaccine uptake, rapidly deploy successful strategies, and phase out those that do not work,” Walkey said. He added that rather than devote resources to vaccine lotteries, states should instead focus their resources on other programs.

These study was published online in the “Journal of the American Medical Association.”

As of July 6, 5.6 million Ohioans (47.87 percent of the state) have received at least part of a COVID-19 vaccine.