The Effect of Proximity on Flu-Shot Participation

The goal of this pilot was to determine whether employees are significantly more likely to get vaccinated if they have a higher probability of walking by the clinic for reasons other than vaccination. We obtained data from an employer with a free workplace influenza vaccination clinic. Using each employee’s building entry/exit swipe card data, we tested whether functional proximity—the likelihood that the employee walks by the clinic for reasons other than vaccination—predicts whether the employee gets vaccinated at the clinic. We also tested whether base proximity—the inverse of walking distance from the employee’s desk to the clinic—predicts vaccination probability. We found that minor changes in the environment can have substantial effects on the probability of vaccination. If these results generalize, health systems should emphasize functional proximity over base proximity when locating preventive health services.