Written reminders increase vaccine coverage in Danish children - evaluation of a nationwide intervention using The Danish Vaccination Register 2014 to 2015.

Wednesday, 31st of May 2017

Euro Surveill. 2017 Apr 27;22(17). pii: 30522. doi: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2017.22.17.30522.

Written reminders increase vaccine coverage in Danish children - evaluation of a nationwide intervention using The Danish Vaccination Register 2014 to 2015.

Suppli CH¹ Rasmussen M² Valentiner-Branth P¹ Mølbak K¹ Krause TG¹.

Abstract

We evaluated a national intervention of sending written reminders to parents of children lacking childhood vaccinations using the Danish Vaccination Register (DDV). The intervention cohort included the full birth cohort of 124189 children born in Denmark who reached the age of 2 and 6.5 years from 15 May 2014 to 14 May 2015. The reference cohort comprised 124427 children who reached the age of 2 and 6.5 years from 15 May 2013 to 14 May 2014. Vaccination coverage was higher in the intervention cohort at 2.5 and 7 years of age. The differences were most pronounced for the second dose of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR2) and the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis-polio vaccine DTaP-IPV4 among the 7-year-olds with 5.0 percentage points (95% confidence interval (CI): 4.5-5.4) and 6.4 percentage points (95% CI: 6.0-6.9) respectively. Among the 2.5 and 7-year-olds the proportion of vaccinations in the preceding 6 months was 46% and three times higher respectively in the intervention cohort than the reference cohort. This study indicates a marked effect of personalised written reminders highest for the vaccines given later in the schedule in the older cohort. In addition the reminders increased awareness about correct registration of vaccinations in DDV.

This article is copyright of The Authors 2017.