CDC Study Shows Children Don't Get Vaccines on Time

Because you’re on the front lines of caring for America’s children, it will help you to know about a recently released CDC study on childhood immunizations. It shows a trend of missed vaccinations in young children.

The study reveals that about 74 percent of children were delayed in receiving one or more recommended vaccinations during their first 24 months. Furthermore, only 3 percent of those children had short delays of one to seven days; 52 percent were undervaccinated for more than six months.

Other findings: Factors associated with severe delay of vaccinations included having a mother who was unmarried or did not have a college degree, living in a household with two or more children, being non-Hispanic black, having two or more vaccination providers, and using public vaccination providers.

The study calls for implementing a system to identify children who are behind on immunizations. The system would help in two ways, said the authors: “The first is to enable the recall of children soon after they fall behind on their immunizations, and the second is to ensure that opportunities to immunize children when they are seen for other medical reasons are not missed.”

The report used data from telephone surveys of parents of 14,810 children. It was published in the March 9 Journal of the American Medical Association, and an abstract of the article is available at http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/293/10/1204.