Abstract
BackgroundIn order to enhance childhood vaccination uptake and the health consequences for the whole society, there is a need to study predictors that might help in understanding parents’ behaviour in relation to childhood vaccination schemes. The aim of this paper is to assess whether parental education has an influence on their children’s public health-care use in terms of visits for vaccinations, and thus evaluate whether more educated parents use public health resources more frequently in childhood immunization schedules.MethodsThe setting was the region of Catalonia in the north-east of Spain. Three different databases, containing information about 11,415 individuals corresponding to 79,905 observations, were merged and linked: 1) observational and longitudinal administrative data for adults and children in Catalonia; 2) a database containing information on the vaccination of children in relation to the public health programme called the “Healthy Child Programme”; and 3) the governmental vaccination registration. The presence of an education gradient was explored using a logistic regression. Children’s health-care use was modelled using a logistic procedure.ResultsThe greater the mothers’ educational attainment level, the higher the probability of being vaccinated in this immunization programme. The presence of an age profile for vaccinations showed that less educated parents visit their GPs more frequently for immunizations when their children are below the age of six, but that pattern is completely the opposite after that age. Hence, for children aged between six and 16, more educated parents are more likely to ensure their children are immunized. Likewise, systematic vaccinations are more likely for those parents with a lower educational attainment level.ConclusionsThis paper evidenced the presence of an education gradient for specific preventive care through the public health system and visits to the GP without any particular disease or advice for specific vaccinations.
Highlights
In order to enhance childhood vaccination uptake and the health consequences for the whole society, there is a need to study predictors that might help in understanding parents’ behaviour in relation to childhood vaccination schemes
The study comprised an analysis of cross-sectional data, for all the screenings made for the period between 2004 and 2012, for the whole population of children and their parents located in the region of Catalonia in the north-east of Spain
Parental behaviour (Bp), lifestyle was captured through lifestyle habits (BMI and dummies representing smoking and heavy alcohol drinking), while X contains a list of covariates denoting differences in sociodemographic characteristics or being the firstborn in the household
Summary
In order to enhance childhood vaccination uptake and the health consequences for the whole society, there is a need to study predictors that might help in understanding parents’ behaviour in relation to childhood vaccination schemes. The aim of this paper is to assess whether parental education has an influence on their children’s public health-care use in terms of visits for vaccinations, and evaluate whether more educated parents use public health resources more frequently in childhood immunization schedules. Vaccinations are one of the most important tools of primary prevention. All countries in the European Union (EU) have a long tradition of implementing vaccination programmes [1,2,3]. The annual return on investment in vaccination has been calculated to be between 12 and 18% [9]. All EU countries have a “vaccination schedule”, recommending that the vaccines be given at various ages during childhood.
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