Expanding the National Immunizaton Survey to address racial and socioeconomic disparities in childhood vaccination coverage

Learning Objectives for this Presentation:
By the end of the presentation participants will be able to identity key concepts addressed by the NIS 2008 socioeconomic status (SES) module, be acquainted with the questions that are included in the module and familiar with additional analysis variables that will be developed based on the module.

Background:
Racial and socioeconomic disparities are a major challenge to programmatic efforts to reach Healthy People immunization goals by 2010 among children aged 19 to 35 months. More research is needed to identify effective strategies to eliminate these disparities. Both simple and complex measures of SES may be needed to fully understand the associations between race/ethnicity, poverty level and vaccination status and identify appropriate strategies to eliminate the disparities.

Setting:
A set of questions referred to as the SES Module will be asked of parents or guardians of children aged 19-35 months as part of the National Immunization Survey (NIS) from January to June, 2008.

Population:
Telephone households with children aged 19-35 months.

Project Description:
The SES module is an add-on to the National Immunization Survey. Initial stages of development included an in-depth review of the social science literature on social indicators of health and published questionnaires. A working group of subject-matter specialists provided input during the development of the module. The module will add an additional 8 minutes to the length of the NIS household telephone survey.

Results/Lessons Learned:
The new module is a comprehensive set of SES questions that complements current SES questions that are routinely part of the NIS. Data generated by the module will allow a more in-depth evaluation of the relationships between race/ethnicity, poverty status, and childhood vaccination. These data are expected to improve our ability to identify populations with low vaccination coverage, and identify additional SES-related factors associated with low vaccination coverage to more effectively target under-vaccinated populations.