Moved and Gone Somewhere: Cross-Jurisdiction Implications of MOGEs

Background: Moved or gone elsewhere (MOGE) status affects the completeness of reminder / recall notifications and vaccination coverage assessments conducted through immunization information systems (IIS).  Little is known about migration of MOGEs between public health jurisdictions.

Objectives:  To assess movement between public health jurisdictions among children with MOGE status in a statewide IIS.

Methods: Children ≤19 years with MOGE status in 12 public health jurisdictions were identified from the Michigan Care Improvement Registry (MCIR) in October, 2009.  Address information was standardized and matched using the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) National Change of Address database (NCOA^Link) for the prior 48 months in two stages: first using parent name, then by child’s name.  Frequency of matches were summarized by geographic location and concordance was assessed with the state and county of last known address.  

Results: Overall, 3,012 MOGE records were matched with a forwarding address in NCOA^Link; of these, 2,031 (67%) moved within Michigan and 981 (33%) moved out of state.  A total of 1,571 children (52%) had a forwarding address in the same county as their last known address.  An additional 10% moved to an adjacent county and 6% moved to a non-adjacent county in Michigan.  Cross-jurisdiction migration of MOGEs varied widely by county of last know address, ranging from 65% to 36% of MOGEs moving outside the local public health jurisdiction.

Conclusions: Many children with MOGE designation in MCIR have moved to new addresses outside the public health jurisdiction of their last known address.  This finding underscores the importance of efforts to maintain current contact information in a statewide IIS.  Additional strategies are needed to reconcile the impact of cross-jurisdiction MOGE migrations on local health department vaccination coverage assessments and recall notifications.