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Measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination coverage: an ecological study of primary health care and socio-economic factors in Catalonia, Spain

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Abstract

This study examined the association of socio-economic factors and the structure of primary care centres (PCCs) with measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination coverage among the 8-year-old population in Catalonia, Spain. We conducted an ecological study to retrospectively assess the MMR vaccination-recorded status of children born in 2012, using public health data extracted in December 2020. For each of 300 PCCs serving 70,498 children, we calculated vaccination coverage rates from electronic health records and linked these rates to a composite deprivation index corresponding to the territory served by each PCC. We identified a relationship between unfavourable socio-economic factors and higher recorded vaccination coverage. On average, directly managed PCCs had higher vaccination coverage rates than indirectly managed PCCs. Greater utilisation of primary care services by the population was also associated with higher vaccination coverage rates. Further research is needed to generate knowledge valuable for informing more equitable child-vaccination service delivery models.

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The datasets analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the review of the English text by Mr Chuck Simmons.

Funding

The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Preventive Medicine Service, Sub-directorate General for Health Promotion, Secretariat of Public Health, Department of Health, Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

    Montse Martínez-Marcos

  2. School of Medicine, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

    Montse Martínez-Marcos & Esperanza-L. Gómez-Durán

  3. Central Vaccine Registry Management Team, Institut Català de la Salut, Girona, Spain

    Anna Reñé-Reñé

  4. Fundació Institut Universitari per a la Recerca a l’Atenció Primària de Salut Jordi Gol i Gurina (IDIAPJGol), Gran Via Corts Catalanes 587 àtic, 08007, Barcelona, Spain

    Edurne Zabaleta-del-Olmo

  5. Gerència Territorial de Barcelona, Institut Català de la Salut, Barcelona, Spain

    Edurne Zabaleta-del-Olmo

  6. Nursing Department, Faculty of Nursing, Universitat de Girona, Girona, Spain

    Edurne Zabaleta-del-Olmo

  7. Sistema d’Informació dels Serveis d’Atenció Primària (SISAP), Healthcare Management, Information Systems Directorate, Institut Català de la Salut, Barcelona, Spain

    Carolina Guiriguet

  8. Gotic Primary Care Centre, Gerència Territorial de Barcelona, Institut Català de la Salut, Barcelona, Spain

    Carolina Guiriguet

  9. Sub-directorate General for Health Promotion, Secretariat of Public Health, Department of Health, Generalitat de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

    Carmen Cabezas-Peña

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  1. Montse Martínez-Marcos
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Contributions

MM-M: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing-review and editing, Visualisation, Supervision, Project administration. AR-R: Validation, Data curation, Writing-review and editing. EZ-d-O: Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing-original draft, Visualisation. CG: Data curation, Resources, Writing-review and editing. E-LG-D: Writing-review and editing, Supervision. CC-P: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Writing-review and editing, Supervision.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Edurne Zabaleta-del-Olmo.

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Competing interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Not applicable. All data collection and analysis were performed at the health system subregion level. According to the Ethics Committee of the Fundació Institut Universitari per a la recerca a l’Atenció Primària de Salut Jordi Gol i Gurina, there was no ethical approval required for this study.

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Martínez-Marcos, M., Reñé-Reñé, A., Zabaleta-del-Olmo, E. et al. Measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination coverage: an ecological study of primary health care and socio-economic factors in Catalonia, Spain. J Public Health Pol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41271-024-00484-3

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