Background:

The use of mobile immunization teams has been proposed as a strategy to increase influenza vaccination (IV) coverage among healthcare workers (HCW), but has not been evaluated in Primary Healthcare (PHC). The objective of this work was to determine if the use of mobile immunization teams increases IV coverage among HCW of a basic health area in the Valencian Community.

Methods:

Community intervention trial that included all HCWs from a basic health area in the Valencian Community. The assignment was by conglomerates in one stage, with the HCWs of a health center as an intervention group and that of the rest of the centers as a control group. The intervention group was visited by a team consisting of a doctor and a nurse who offered on-site IV, while the control group did not receive such a visit. The independent variable was the visit of the mobile immunization team and the dependent variable was IV in the study season (2015-2016). Data analysis was done both for the total IV coverage and separately for sex, age, professional category and history of IV in the previous seasons. A McNemar test was used to compare frequency distributions of paired data.

Results:

The control group went from 14 (31.8%) vaccinated in the 2014-2015 season to 19 (45.2%) in the 2015-2016 season, while the intervention group went from 19 (30.6%) to 34 (54.8%). Among the total of the WHCs it went from 33 (31.3%) vaccinated to 53 (50.0%). This increase was significant. By groups, the increase was significant among those who received the visit of the mobile team (p = 0.0003), but not in the control group (p=0.18).

Conclusions:

The visit of a mobile immunization team is a significant factor favorable to IV among HCW in our setting.

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