In the absence of a national immunization registry, the data sources and methodology used for immunization coverage assessment by provinces and territories and at the federal level in Canada are variable. This makes it challenging to make comparisons by region and to derive national coverage estimates outside of regularly conducted surveys. Adding to this background is the process of change management that is occurring in several provinces and territories with the adoption of the Panorama application, or other new immunization information systems.

This variability coupled with the changes underway present an opportunity to learn from existing and new approaches to coverage assessment used within Canada. The first aim of this project is to conduct an evaluation and gap analysis of the current systems, data sources and methodologies used in Canada for immunization coverage assessment by interviewing key informant experts in this area. This work will be followed by the second aim of the study, which will involve analyses of immunization data in several provinces to explore province-specific questions of interest including completeness of immunization data capture and the assessment and comparison of on-time and up-to-date immunization coverage estimates in age groups of interest.

Team Members:

• Sarah Wilson, Project Lead, Public Health Ontario
• Salah Mahmud, University of Manitoba
• Marc Brisson, Université Laval
• Natasha Crowcroft, Public Health Ontario
• Shelley Deeks, Public Health Ontario
• Shalini Desai, Public Health Agency of Canada
• Jeff Kwong, University of Toronto
• Shannon MacDonald, University of Alberta
• Monika Naus, University of British Columbia
• Dat Tran, University of Toronto
• Karen Tu, University of Toronto