Vaccine Decision Support Tool

Note:

This tool is currently in development and is intended for internal use only by the Minnesota Department of Health and the University of Minnesota.

Background:

Understanding vaccination coverage requires examining the complex interplay of social, economic, and demographic factors that influence vaccine uptake.

Purpose:

This interactive dashboard combines multiple data sources to provide a view of vaccination patterns and health priorities across Minnesota. It has three tabs:

  • Vaccine Coverage Map: This tab visualizes vaccine coverage across Minnesota, with options to select specific regions or counties, stratify by age, and/or to view where higher vs. lower vaccine uptake areas are located. Furthermore, this tab has a table that compares characteristics, such as Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) (Opens PDF) and insurance rates, of higher vs. lower vaccine uptake areas to help users better understand potential underlying reasons for differences in vaccine uptake.
  • Vaccine Coverage Data Table: This tab provides the underlying data used in the Vaccine Coverage Map tab. Data tables can be sorted by vaccine coverage percentage or SVI.
  • Hospitalization Estimates: This tab allows users to explore how changes in vaccine coverage and flu season severity may impact hospitalization rates in their region.

Data Sources:

The Vaccine Coverage Map and Data Tables integrate two primary data sources: vaccination and demogrpahic data from the Minnesota Electronic Health Consortium (MNEHRC), and socioeconomic data from the 2020 U.S. Census. The Hospitalization Estimates tab additionally uses national data from the Minnesota Department of Health and the CDC on historic hospitalization rates, flu season severity, vaccine coverage, and vaccine effectiveness, as well as data from MDH on historic hospitalization rates.

Tool Limitations:

  • The tool uses 2023 vaccine data and does not integrate real-time vaccine data from the current flu season.
  • The hospitalization estimation tool is to be used to allow for exploration of the effects of improved vaccination rates. This does not mean it is guaranteed to be accurate, and the tool itself has been kept simple, thus excluding some of the more complicated interplays between flu hospitalizations and other variables.

Funding Source:

This tool was developed by the Midwest Analytics and Disease Modeling Center (MADMC) with funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For more information about MADMC, visit the website: MADMC (Opens Webpage)

For questions, please contact: Lindsey Erickson, Lindsey.Erickson@state.mn.gov

Map of Minnesota Vaccine Coverage

This map displays the proportion of individuals vaccinated for influenza during the 2024-2025 flu season. Data was provided by the Minnesota Electronic Health Records Consortium Using the left-hand panel, users can:

• Selecting different geographic levels (state, region, county, or city)
• Focus on specific age groups
• Choose between viewing a map of vaccine coverage for all census tracks or viewing the census tracts with the highest and lowest vaccine coverage (blue for higher coverage vs. red for lower coverage) within the selected geography. Highest and lowest vaccine coverage census tracts are defined by percentile within the user selected region: by default, the map will display census tracts with vaccine coverage in the top 10th percentile as “highest” areas and census tracts with vaccine coverage in the bottom 10th percentile (or 90th percentile) as “lowest.” Users can change the percentile threshold using the slider on the left-hand panel.

The table below the map compares average census tract characteristics for tracts with the highest vs. lowest vaccine uptake.

Methods: Statistical Comparison of Highest vs. Lowest Vaccine Coverage Census Tracts

Independent two-sample t-tests were used to compare census tract characteristics between areas with higher and lower vaccine coverage. For each census tract characteristic (e.g., population density, poverty rates, SVI scores), we:

  • 1. Identified census tracts in the specified high and low percentile groups
  • 2. Calculated mean values for each characteristic within these groups
  • 3. Performed a t-test to assess whether the differences between high and low vaccination areas were statistically significant
  • 4. Reported the mean values for both groups and the corresponding p-value. A p-value less than 0.05 suggests a statistically significant difference between the high and low vaccination groups.

Note: In cases where there were insufficient observations for a particular characteristic, the t-test was not performed and the p-value is reported as NA.

Influenza Hospitalization Estimates

Scenario Modeling Took Methods and Limitations

Purpose: The purpose of this tool is to explore how vaccine coverage and flu season severity may impact influenza hospitalizations within user-selected geographics in a hypothetical scenario. The purpose is not to accurately predict flu cases or hospitalizations for the current influenza season.

Data: Data informing model parameters are based on national publicly available data from CDC for annual flu seasons from 2010-2023 (excluding 2020-2021 due to COVID-19 impacts). Further information can be found in the methods.

How To Use: Users select a region on the left-hand tab and can vary vaccine coverage and flu severity. The tool displays historic data for the user-selected region, as well as potential hospitalization estimates for the scenario specified by the user inputs.

Note: This tool uses historic data to make estimates and does not use real-time data from the current flu season.