Nurses and infant vaccination coverage

Timely vaccination adherence for infants can avoid costs for the health care system and support population health. Can public health interventions–such as nurse home visits–encourage timely uptake? We study this question in the context of universal home visits for new parents in Denmark. We exploit merged nurse records and administrative data and use an event study design to compare the outcomes of families, who vary in the exact timing of their nurse visit around the recommended age for infant vaccinations. We find that a nurse visit prior to the recommended vaccination age increases parents’ probability of timely vaccination adherence. In the longer run, vaccination coverage rates between treated and control parents converge, and thus our findings suggest that nurses primarily act as human vaccination reminders. However, as our heterogeneity analyses show that a timely nurse visit positively affects vaccination coverage for inexperienced parents, adequately timed nurse visits may have the potential to also increase vaccination coverage.