Crowe, S;
Utley, M;
Walker, G;
Panovska-Griffiths, J;
Grove, P;
Pagel, C;
(2015)
A novel approach to evaluating the UK childhood immunisation schedule: estimating the effective coverage vector across the entire vaccine programme.
BMC Infectious Diseases
, 15
(1)
, Article 585. 10.1186/s12879-015-1299-8.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: The availability of new vaccines can prompt policy makers to consider changes to the routine childhood immunisation programme in the UK. Alterations to one aspect of the schedule may have implications for other areas of the programme (e.g. adding more injections could reduce uptake of vaccines featuring later in the schedule). Colleagues at the Department of Health (DH) in the UK therefore wanted to know whether assessing the impact across the entire programme of a proposed change to the UK schedule could lead to different decisions than those made on the current case-by-case basis. This work is a first step towards addressing this question. METHODS: A novel framework for estimating the effective coverage against all of the diseases within a vaccination programme was developed. The framework was applied to the current (August 2015) UK childhood immunisation programme, plausible extensions to it in the foreseeable future (introducing vaccination against Meningitis B and/or Hepatitis B) and a "what-if" scenario regarding a Hepatitis B vaccine scare that was developed in close collaboration with DH. RESULTS: Our applications of the framework demonstrate that a programme-view of hypothetical changes to the schedule is important. For example, we show how introducing Hepatitis B vaccination could negatively impact aspects of the current programme by reducing uptake of vaccines featuring later in the schedule, and illustrate that the potential benefits of introducing any new vaccine are susceptible to behaviour changes affecting uptake (e.g. a vaccine scare). We show how it may be useful to consider the potential benefits and scheduling needs of all vaccinations on the horizon of interest rather than those of an individual vaccine in isolation, e.g. how introducing Meningitis B vaccination could saturate the early (2-month) visit, thereby potentially restricting scheduling options for Hepatitis B immunisation should it be introduced to the programme in the future. CONCLUSIONS: Our results demonstrate the potential benefit of considering the programme-wide impact of changes to an immunisation schedule, and our framework is an important step in the development of a means for systematically doing so.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | A novel approach to evaluating the UK childhood immunisation schedule: estimating the effective coverage vector across the entire vaccine programme |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s12879-015-1299-8 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12879-015-1299-8 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute for Global Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Mathematics UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Mathematics > Clinical Operational Research Unit |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1475061 |
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