Maternal Influenza Vaccination and the Effect of Provincial Immunization Programs in Canada

Abstract

With evidence suggesting the importance of influenza vaccination of pregnant women, Canadian provinces have started to implement different publicly funded immunization programs to encourage vaccination of pregnant women. Four programs are implemented between 2000 and 2010: Universal Influenza Immunization Campaign (UIIC), the program offering coverage to pregnant women (full-coverage program), the program offering coverage to pregnant women in the third trimester (partial-coverage program) and the program offering no coverage to pregnant women (no-coverage program). This paper examines the effect of these programs on influenza vaccination of pregnant women using linear probability model of micro determinants of vaccination. The results show that both UIIC and full-coverage program raise the vaccination rate of pregnant women by 21% compared to no-coverage program. However, only full-coverage program has a differential effect on pregnant women that is over 10% while partial-coverage program raises the vaccination rate of pregnant women and non-pregnant women both by 6.8%.