Use of Influenza and Pneumococcal Vaccine in People with Diabetes

Objectives: Infection with influenza or pneumococcal disease can result in serious complication for individuals with diabetes. Current immunization guidelines for the influenza and pneumococcal vaccines identify diabetics as one of the major target groups largely because of the risk of serious complications associated with both diseases, including death. Diabetic patients who are infected with the influenza virus face serious complications including pneumonia, dehydration, kidney failure, heart failure, and hospitalization. Methods: We analyzed data for diabetic adult Americans (n=57,480) from the 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System using the STATA 12 software package for Windows. In addition to descriptive statistics, bivariate analysis was performed to determine associations between the covariates and the uptake of influenza and pneumococcal vaccines. Data were weighted and adjusted for the complex sampling strategy used in the data collection. Multivariate logistic regression models were also estimated. Results and conclusion: Preliminary results suggest that women, educational attainment, and race/ethnicity are all significantly associated with the uptake of influenza and pneumococcal vaccines. Persons without insurance are nearly 40% less likely to take the pneumococcal vaccines (p < 0.001) and just as much less likely to take the influenza vaccine (p<0.001). Individuals with a regular source of care are 40% more likely to report the uptake of the influenza vaccine (p < 0.001) and 30% more like for pneumococcal vaccine. The results suggest that that diabetics face systemic barriers to essential preventive services such as immunizations, which can be critical to avoiding serious complications.