The influence of education on the access to childhood immunization: the case of Spain

BACKGROUND: In order to enhance childhood vaccination uptake and the health consequences for the whole society, there is a need to study predictors that might help in understanding parents’ behaviour in relation to childhood vaccination schemes. The aim of this paper is to assess whether parental education has an influence on their children’s public health-care use in terms of visits for vaccinations, and thus evaluate whether more educated parents use public health resources more frequently in childhood immunization schedules. METHODS: The setting was the region of Catalonia in the north-east of Spain. Three different databases, containing information about 11,415 individuals corresponding to 79,905 observations, were merged and linked: 1) observational and longitudinal administrative data for adults and children in Catalonia; 2) a database containing information on the vaccination of children in relation to the public health programme called the “Healthy Child Programme”; and 3) the governmental vaccination registration. The presence of an education gradient was explored using a logistic regression. Children’s health-care use was modelled using a logistic procedure. RESULTS: The greater the mothers’ educational attainment level, the higher the probability of being vaccinated in this immunization programme. The presence of an age profile for vaccinations showed that less educated parents visit their GPs more frequently for immunizations when their children are below the age of six, but that pattern is completely the opposite after that age. Hence, for children aged between six and 16, more educated parents are more likely to ensure their children are immunized. Likewise, systematic vaccinations are more likely for those parents with a lower educational attainment level. CONCLUSIONS: This paper evidenced the presence of an education gradient for specific preventive care through the public health system and visits to the GP without any particular disease or advice for specific vaccinations.