KEYWORDS:
vaccination coverage survey, provider verification, infant, RDD telephone survey
BACKGROUND:
The San Diego County Immunization Program conducts annual random digit dial telephone surveys to assess vaccine coverage. From 1995 to 1998, children’s vaccination dates reported by parents were verified by directly contacting healthcare providers.
OBJECTIVE:
To improve the efficiency of vaccine record verification by using both the San Diego Immunization Registry and provider contact to verify vaccination dates.
METHOD:
Telephone surveyors call randomly selected households. Parents are requested to report the vaccination dates of children 19–36 months, and to permit provider verification. Staff identify children who are up-to-date (UTD) according to parent-reported vaccination dates. Beginning in 1999, the first year the Registry was available, children not UTD whose parents agreed to verification were looked up in the Registry to verify vaccination status. Records of those remaining children not found in the Registry were verified by contacting their providers.
RESULT:
Before the Registry, 31% of children’s records needed to be verified by contacting providers. In 2002, the most recent year the Registry was used to verify RDD data, 7% were resolved using the Registry, and 26% verified by contacting providers. These results improved during the Registry years 1999 - 2002.
CONCLUSION:
As growing numbers of providers increase the number of children in the Registry, it becomes an increasingly valuable tool for verifying vaccination coverage. In the future, the Registry alone might be used to calculate vaccination coverage statistics for some portions of the population.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
Understand methods and results of using an Immunization Registry to verify data from vaccination surveys.
Handout (.ppt format, 68.0 kb)
Back to Surveys, Charts, and Registries: Combining Date Sources to Produce More Reliable Vaccination Coverage Estimates
Back to The 2003 Immunization Registry Conference (October 27-29, 2003)