Immunization rates: a community assessment approach for diagnosis

Concerned about low immunization rates, school nurses, nursing school faculty, and public health nursing graduate students formed a partnership to identify the problems underlying the low rate of immunizations. Utilizing a representative school district within a large metropolitan area, the process was expedited by an assessment of the community, including a windshield survey, resource survey, collection of demographic data, and generation of mapping software to highlight relationships within census tracts. These relationships emphasized immunization rates within census tracts by concentrations of single-parent families, residential mobility, or foreign nationality. In addition, interviews were held with key informants in the community and with parents. In this instance, communication with the parents was a critical factor in determining that the problems were neither access issues nor parental lack of concern but instead communication problems. A simplified communication strategy to parents that is well timed can be a low-cost solution to the concern over low immunization rates.