How can the public health impact of vaccination be estimated?
File(s)
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Background
Deaths due to vaccine preventable diseases cause a notable proportion of mortality worldwide. To quantify the importance of vaccination, it is necessary to estimate the burden averted through vaccination. The Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium (VIMC) was established to estimate the health impact of vaccination.
Methods
We describe the methods implemented by the VIMC to estimate impact by calendar year, birth year and year of vaccination (YoV). The calendar and birth year methods estimate impact in a particular year and over the lifetime of a particular birth cohort, respectively. The YoV method estimates the impact of a particular year’s vaccination activities through the use of impact ratios which have no stratification and stratification by activity type and/or birth cohort. Furthermore, we detail an impact extrapolation (IE) method for use between coverage scenarios. We compare the methods, focusing on YoV for hepatitis B, measles and yellow fever.
Results
We find that the YoV methods estimate similar impact with routine vaccinations but have greater yearly variation when campaigns occur with the birth cohort stratification. The IE performs well for the YoV methods, providing a time-efficient mechanism for updates to impact estimates.
Conclusions
These methods provide a robust set of approaches to quantify vaccination impact; however it is vital that the area of impact estimation continues to develop in order to capture the full effect of immunisation.
Deaths due to vaccine preventable diseases cause a notable proportion of mortality worldwide. To quantify the importance of vaccination, it is necessary to estimate the burden averted through vaccination. The Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium (VIMC) was established to estimate the health impact of vaccination.
Methods
We describe the methods implemented by the VIMC to estimate impact by calendar year, birth year and year of vaccination (YoV). The calendar and birth year methods estimate impact in a particular year and over the lifetime of a particular birth cohort, respectively. The YoV method estimates the impact of a particular year’s vaccination activities through the use of impact ratios which have no stratification and stratification by activity type and/or birth cohort. Furthermore, we detail an impact extrapolation (IE) method for use between coverage scenarios. We compare the methods, focusing on YoV for hepatitis B, measles and yellow fever.
Results
We find that the YoV methods estimate similar impact with routine vaccinations but have greater yearly variation when campaigns occur with the birth cohort stratification. The IE performs well for the YoV methods, providing a time-efficient mechanism for updates to impact estimates.
Conclusions
These methods provide a robust set of approaches to quantify vaccination impact; however it is vital that the area of impact estimation continues to develop in order to capture the full effect of immunisation.
Date Issued
2021-11-09
Date Acceptance
2021-10-19
Citation
BMC Public Health, 2021, 21 (1)
ISSN
1471-2458
Publisher
BMC
Journal / Book Title
BMC Public Health
Volume
21
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© TheAuthor(s). 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. 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 in a credit line to the data
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34753437
PII: 10.1186/s12889-021-12040-9
Subjects
Hepatitis
IMMUNIZATION ACTIVITIES
Impact
INCOME
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Measles
Modelling
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Science & Technology
Vaccine
Yellow fever
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Article Number
2049
Date Publish Online
2021-11-09