Collaborative Research: Pediatric Vaccine Formulary Optimization and Analysis

儿童疫苗接种已成为美国儿童对抗传染病的最大单一防御措施。 此外，生物技术的突破使疫苗制造商有可能为许多疾病开发疫苗抗原。 这种创新的一个未预见的后果是，建议的儿童免疫接种时间表（由免疫接种做法咨询委员会提出）已经变得足够拥挤，以至于在这一时间表中增加额外疫苗的前景可能不会受到卫生保健提供者或父母/监护人的欢迎。 此外，卫生保健决策者面临着大量的选择，没有方法学基础来比较和评价他们不同的疫苗选择。 为了解决这些问题，将制定运筹学模型和算法，以捕捉推荐的儿童免疫接种计划的关键特征，以及国家推荐的儿童免疫接种计划中规定的限制和要求。 这些决策工具将为卫生保健管理者提供一种手段来解决各种重要的儿科免疫接种问题，包括疫苗完成问题，有限的预算问题，以及父母/监护人的犹豫问题，如果成功的话，根据这项研究开发的模型和算法将提供严格的公式来描述各种各样的儿科免疫接种问题。 获得的新模型和算法将用于获得有关儿科免疫接种的公共卫生政策的基本见解，以及卫生保健决策者必须克服的挑战。 这项研究的结果还将提供定量工具，用于比较和评估满足推荐的儿童免疫接种计划所需的儿科疫苗处方。 这些工具不仅在评估儿科免疫接种的现状方面具有价值，而且有可能应用于确定应开发的理想的新疫苗组合，并衡量新免疫接种政策和卫生保健决策者要求的易处理性。 鉴于现有的一系列疫苗选择，这一努力的结果可能导致更高的免疫接种率。 这项研究将与疾病控制和预防中心（CDC）的国家免疫计划人员合作进行。

Childhood vaccination has become the single greatest defense against infectious diseases among children in the United States. Moreover, biotechnology breakthroughs are making it possible for vaccine manufacturers to develop vaccine antigens for numerous diseases. One unforeseen consequence of such innovations is that the recommended childhood immunization schedule (as set forth by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) has become sufficiently crowded that the prospect of adding additional vaccines to this schedule may not be well received by either health-care providers or parents/guardians. Moreover, health-care decision-makers are being faced with an overwhelming number of choices, with no methodological basis for comparing and evaluating their different vaccine selection options. To address these issues, operations research models and algorithms will formulated to capture the key features of the recommended childhood immunization schedule, as well as the restrictions and requirements as set forth in the national recommended childhood immunization schedule. These decision-making tools will provide health-care administrators with a means to address a variety of important pediatric immunization problems, including the vaccine completion problem, the limited budget problem, and the parent/guardian balking problem.If successful, the models and algorithms developed under this research will provide rigorous formulations for describing a wide variety of pediatric immunization issues. The new models and algorithms obtained will be used to obtain fundamental insights into the public health policies surrounding pediatric immunization and the challenges that must be overcome for health-care decision-makers to be equipped to deal with them. The results of this research will also provide quantitative tools for comparing and evaluating pediatric vaccine formularies necessary to satisfy the recommended childhood immunization schedule. These tools will not only be of value in assessing the current state of pediatric immunization, but also have the potential to be applied to determine the ideal set of new vaccine combinations that should be developed, and to measure the tractability of new immunization policies and requirements for health-care decision-makers. The results of this effort may then lead to higher immunization rates, given the set of vaccine choices available. This research will be conducted in collaboration with personnel within the National Immunization Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).