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Background: A comprehensive and agreed-upon definition of vaccine literacy (VL) could support the understanding of vaccination and help policy-makers and individuals make informed decisions about vaccines., Methods: To shed some light on this debate and provide clarity, a scoping review was conducted to collect, summarize, and analyse available definitions of VL. Based on the findings of the scoping review, a new and comprehensive definition was proposed by a panel of experts., Results: Fifty-three articles were included, and two of them appeared to be the milestones around which the other definitions were grouped. The new definition proposed by the panel of experts included not only the personal perspective, but also the community, population, and organizational perspectives. Moreover, due to the increasing complexity of the social context with respect to the ability to navigate, understand, and use information and services, the definition of organizational vaccine literacy and the attributes of a vaccine literate healthcare organization have been proposed., Conclusion: The new definition can contribute to the overall paradigm of health literacy and its distinct component of vaccine literacy, possibly improving the implementation of public health strategies to allow vaccination to be understood as a social practice by the entire community. This study describes the conceptual foundations, the competencies, and the civic orientation to be considered when developing measurement tools devoted to assessing VL at the different levels and in different contexts., (© 2023. BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature.)

Competing Interests: The authors declare that they do not have any conflicts of interest.

Introduction : Vaccination is a crucial tool for the primary prevention of infectious diseases. Thanks to widespread vaccination, in the last century smallpox has been eradicated, and the Americas and Europe have become polio-free. Areas covered : The aim of our study was to assess vaccination coverage in childhood up to booster preschool age in order to update the analysis on European trends of immunization coverage in the last nine years (2009-2017) and to assess the impact of different national policies on vaccine uptake. Expert opinion : Despite the good results, several EU countries are going through unprecedented outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases due to insufficient coverage. The increase of vaccine hesitancy has made it difficult to reach and maintain high rates of vaccination coverage. Enforcing mandatory vaccinations is one of the strategies adopted by some countries, like Italy and France, to increase coverage. However, each country should find the most suitable way to keep up with vaccination coverages according to own cultural and organizational background.

Vaccine literacy (VL) is the ability to find, understand, and evaluate vaccination-related information to make appropriate decisions about immunization. The tools developed so far for its evaluation have produced consistent results. However, some dimensions may be underestimated due to the complexity of factors influencing VL. Moreover, the heterogeneity of methods used in studies employing these tools hinders a comprehensive understanding of its role even more. To overcome these limitations, a path has been sought to propose new instruments. This has necessitated updating earlier literature reviews on VL and related tools, exploring its relationship with vaccine hesitancy (VH), and examining associated variables like beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors towards immunization. Based on the current literature, and supported by the re-analysis of a dataset from an earlier study, we propose a theoretical framework to serve as the foundation for creating future assessment tools. These instruments should not only evaluate the psychological factors underlying the motivational aspect of VL, but also encompass knowledge and competencies. The positioning of VL in the framework at the intersection between sociodemographic antecedents and attitudes, leading to behaviors and outcomes, explains why and how VL can directly or indirectly influence vaccination decisions by countering VH and operating at personal, as well as at organizational and community levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B Correction: BMC Public Health 23, 1501 (2023) b B https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-16437-6 b The family and given names of the authors in the original publication were swapped. Reference 1 Chiara L. Vaccination as a social practice: towards a definition of personal, community, population, and organizational vaccine literacy. [Extracted from the article]