title: Preventing epidemics with age-specific vaccination schedules.
abstract: A method is proposed for computing the coverage required to prevent epidemics by age-specific vaccination schedules. The method applies in a very general setting and provides explicit expressions in many cases. It can accommodate vaccination doses administered at different ages, heterogeneity among individuals of different ages, a community structured into households, and waning of vaccine-induced immunity. A comparison of results for two specific community settings, with analogous parameter values, indicates that the immunity coverage required to prevent epidemics in a community of households is less than that required for a community of uniformly mixing individuals.
authors.affiliation: School of Statistical Science, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia.
authors.forename: N G
authors.initials: NG
authors.lastname: Becker
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bahrampour
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D003140:Communicable Disease Control; D004196:Disease Outbreaks / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D007115:Immunization Schedule; D008433:Mathematics; D008954:Models, Biological; D014611:Vaccination / Q000379:methods*