Angel Paternina-Caicedo and others at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health used measles data from Project Tycho to estimate the health and economic impact of measles vaccination in US states since 1964.
Authors
Angel Paternina-Caicedo
Julia Driessen
Mark Roberts
Willem Gijsbert van Panhuis
Related Project Tycho Datasets
United States of America - Measles
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Vaccines have been used successfully for disease elimination programs in many countries. Evidence on the impact of vaccination programs can support decision-making among medical practitioners and policy makers to improve immunization rates. We estimated the health and economic impact of measles vaccination for each of the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia since 1964.
METHODS
For each state, we fitted multiple time-series models to prevaccination data and used the best-fitting model to predict counterfactual cases that would have occurred in the absence of vaccination. We then subtracted observed from counterfactual measles cases, deaths, and related costs to estimate the impact of vaccination.
RESULTS
We estimated that 149 million children were vaccinated against measles in the United States between 1964 and 2014, at a cost of $12.2 billion, and that vaccination prevented 29.8 million cases, 32 000 deaths, and $25.8 billion in societal costs. The impact exceeded the national average in 70% of Western and Northeastern states, compared with only 24% of Southern and Midwestern states.
CONCLUSIONS
The significant health and economic benefit of measles vaccination in the United States should encourage continued investments to sustain and expand vaccination programs globally.
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