Use of health care reimbursement data to estimate vaccination coverage in France: Example of hepatitis B, meningitis C, and human papillomavirus vaccination.

BACKGROUND

Sources of data used in France to routinely monitor vaccination coverage, such as the Child Health Certificates and school surveys, allow reliable estimations, but data are not made available with long delays. To rapidly identify recent changes, we have explored the feasibility and relevance of using vaccine reimbursement data.

METHODS

We used the Permanent Sample of Beneficiaries, a representative sample of the National Health Insurance Information System, which contains data on health spending reimbursement of the vast majority of the population. We first validated this new source by comparing measles vaccine coverage between Child Health Certificates and the Permanent Sample of Beneficiaries. We present herein the results on hepatitis B, meningococcal C, and human papillomavirus vaccination (HPV) coverage.

RESULTS

Measles vaccine coverage estimated with the Permanent Sample of Beneficiaries (91.4%) is very close to the estimation obtained through Child Health Certificates (90.6%). For children born in 2011, hepatitis B vaccination coverage at 24 months of age was 88.7% for one dose and meningococcal vaccination coverage was 56.4% for one dose in December 2013. Of girls born in 1997, 20.1% had received the full HPV vaccination series on their 16th birthday.

CONCLUSION

This novel routine vaccination coverage monitoring tool provides regularly updated reactive and reliable vaccination coverage estimates in children.