Show number of children that fell under the purview of the SLVHD 257 or 39 WIC 331 or 46 or AUCH clinics 465 or in each zip code The remaining children seen in the public sector are believed to come through the ChildrenHealth Insurance Plan CHIP or are under Medicaid The immunization rates for the SLVHD Sukhan 2000 WIC Sukhan 2000 and AUCH Jacobs 2000 children were then charted by zip code Figure Based on these graphs five zip codes were identified as being below the cut-off of 85 UTD in the SLVHD data Tablesummarizes these zip codes For comparison the 84118 zip code was selected asgood performer 90 UTD Community Characteristics An extensive tabulaion was done to assess various characteristics of individual communities that were possibly relevant to children health care and the interrelation of the two There were no obvious patterns between any relevant variable and immunization rates across the poorly performing zip codes or by comparing the poor performers with the positive control zip code of 84118 Keams For example the per capita income general metric for affluence quality of health care etc of Rose Park 84116 is among the lowest in the state 12 871 and that of Holladay 84124 is among the highest 21 967 In contrast the per capita income of Keams 84118 is also low 12 057 Community Health Status 2000 Another community feature that did not appear to correlate with immunization rates was the availability of medical care particularly pediatricians For example relative abundance of clinics and facilities is located in the 84102 zip code most notably the Bryner Clinic of IHC which houses 10 pediatricians Even so this zip code was among the poorer performers in the present assessment pockets of under-immunization do exist in Salt Lake County that were hidden in the data presented by large geographic area Immunization rates do not appear to bedirect function of community characteristics and the assumption that affluent communities need no effort or assistance with increasing immunization rates is incorrect SAA isvaluable tool to identity local health-related difficulties such as low immunization rates and may allow small geographic areas of low immunization rates to be specifically targeted for barrier to immunization analysis and for application of scarce resources Relevant individuals in targeted areas could be rapidly involved in the discussion which would help ensurefull understanding ofparticular community including cultural issues etc Yearly analysis in this way would allow forrapid shift of attention and resources to other geographic areas as appropriate Collection of data from private providers is absolutely necessary The timely reporting of numbers of children in each health plan along with immunization rates preferably asfunction of zip code or other small area is required to producecoherent and complete picture Another area of great need is the assessment of immunization rates asfunction of race or ethnicity which is not currentlypart of the Stateminority health report Chazotsang 2000 Utah Health Status Update 2001 CDC information for Utah does not include this information either Estimated Vaccination Coverage by Race Ethnicity 2000 The difficulty in obtaining these data underscore the absolute need foruniform comprehensive tracking system to be applied to all providers both public and private The developing Utah State-wide Immunization Information System USIIS 2000 is suchsystem which will make collecting tracking and analyzing immunization histories far easier and more meaningful Conclusions Based on the data from the public sector Digital image 2005 Marriott Library University of Utah Al rights reserved |