Abstract
Background The U.S. policy goals regarding influenza vaccination coverage rate among the elderly include the increase in the coverage rate and the elimination of disparities across racial/ethnic groups. Objective To examine the potential effectiveness of a television (TV) campaign to increase seasonal influenza vaccination among the elderly. Methods We estimated the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER, defined as incremental cost per additionally vaccinated Medicare individual) of a hypothetical nationwide TV campaign for influenza vaccination compared with no campaign. We measured the effectiveness of the nationwide TV campaign (advertised once a week at prime time for 30 seconds) during a 17-week influenza vaccination season among four racial/ethnic elderly groups (N=39 million): non-Hispanic white (W), non-Hispanic African American (AA), English-speaking Hispanic (EH), and Spanish-speaking Hispanic (SH). Results The hypothetical campaign cost was $5,960,000 (in 2012 US dollars). The estimated campaign effectiveness ranged from -1.1% (the SH group) to 1.42% (the W group), leading to an increased disparity in influenza vaccination among non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic African American (W-AA) groups (0.6 percentage points), W-EH groups (0.1 percentage points), and W-SH groups (1.5 percentage points). The estimated ICER was $23.54 (95% confidence interval $14.21-$39.37) per additionally vaccinated Medicare elderly in a probabilistic analysis. Race/ethnicity-specific ICERs were lowest among the EH group ($22.27), followed by the W group ($22.47) and the AA group ($30.55). The nationwide TV campaign was concluded to be reasonably cost-effective compared with a benchmark intervention (with ICER $44.39 per vaccinated individual) of a school-located vaccination program. Break-even analyses estimated the maximum acceptable campaign cost to be $14,870,000, which was comparable to the benchmark ICER. Conclusions The results could justify public expenditures on the implementation of a future nationwide TV campaign, which should include multilingual campaigns, for promoting seasonal influenza vaccination.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 1180 |
Pages (from-to) | 622-630 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Value in Health |
Volume | 18 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 1 2015 |
Keywords
- cost-effectiveness
- elderly population
- influenza vaccination
- television campaign
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Health Policy
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health