Vaccine Hesitancy in Parents of Children With Congenital Urogenital Anomalies With Hypospadias and Undescended Testis

Parental hesitancy towards childhood vaccines is one of the most important public health problems of today, affecting not only children but also the whole society. We evaluate the vaccine hesitancy (VH) among parents of male children without any malformations and those with congenital urogenital anomalies (CUA), including hypospadias and undescended testicles. This evaluation considers family characteristics, health literacy, and health practice information provided to their children. Our study was conducted as two descriptive analytic study; children admitting for circumcision with no malformation (CNM) and children having CUA. The data were collected by using family-child information from, the “‘Turkey Health Literacy Scale” (TSOY-32) and “Vaccine Hesitancy Scale” (VHS) together. Upper quartile of VHS was defined as VHS-uQ. Of the children 96.6% (n = 395) had been vaccinated. Parents who did not routinely administer vitamin D to their babies had 25 times higher odds of VHS-uQ in the CUA group (p < 0.001). Mothers with a high school education or above had 4.69 times higher VHS-uQ (p < 0.001). Having both parents vaccinated against COVID-19 were associated with a lower rate for VHS-uQ in both the CUA group and the CNM group (p < 0.001 for both). VHS-uQ seen to be 4.57 times higher among those with higher TSOY-32 scores (p = 0.034). This study identifies maternal HL and adherence to preventive care as modifiable determinants of VH in mothers of children with CUA. Establishing trust through consistent healthcare engagement and evidence-based counseling emerges as the critical intervention pathway for improving vaccination acceptance in this population.