An empirical study on the effect of influenza vaccination on the prevention of school absence among primary and seconda-ry school students
Objective To evaluate the preventive effect of implementing the free influenza vaccination policy on school absence among primary and secondary school students,so as to provide a reference for formulating and adjusting vaccination strategies.Methods Among primary and secondary school students aged 6 to 18 in Longgang District,Shenzhen,they were divided into a vaccinated group(265 996 students)and an unvaccinated group(122 513 students)according to their influenza vaccination history during November 2023.Propensity score matching was used to conduct a 1∶1 match between the two groups to balance covariates.The number of absences per month was set as the dependent variable to construct a difference-in-differences model,and Poisson re-gression was employed to analyze the overall and multi-time-point effects.Results Vaccination against influenza was associated with low rate of absenteeism among primary and secondary school students,with an overall preventive effect of 26.52％(95％CI=23.47％-29.45％).The preventive effects in November(the month of vaccination)and December 2023,January and March 2024 were 42.12％,40.12％,30.33％and 20.91％,respectively.The preventive effect of the influenza vaccine on absenteeism among primary school students(26.39％)was not significantly different from that among secondary school students(27.97％)(P＞0.05).The regression coefficient for class vaccination rates ranged from 0.998 to 0.999(P＜0.01),indicating that for every 10％increase in influenza vaccination rates,absenteeism could be reduced by 1.5％to 2.2％.Conclusion Implementing free influenza vaccina-tion for primary and secondary school students might help to reduce the risk of absenteeism,yielding significant socioeconomic ben-efits.
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