The consequences can be severe for seniors, a population known to be at high risk of serious complications from both pneumonia and influenza. Experts recommend that seniors get the seasonal flu vaccine every year and the pneumonia vaccine once after the age of 65, with a booster 5 years later if they are at particularly high risk.
"Immunizations are so important for seniors. They save lives," Amelia Haviland of the RAND Corp., in Santa Monica, California, told Reuters Health. "And any group that has a lower take-up rate of immunizations poses a public health risk, particularly for their communities, but also for everyone."
Hispanic seniors are known to be more likely than their white peers to miss immunizations. Their low vaccination and high infection rates during the 2009 H1N1 flu epidemic, and the more recent whooping cough outbreak in California, are cases in point.
But it's been several years since estimates of immunization rates have been made -- and no prior research has looked into differences in rates among different subgroups of Hispanic seniors, according to Haviland.
"They're a very diverse group, so this information could be really useful for targeting efforts," she added.
In the new study, Haviland and her colleagues looked at data from a Medicare survey of nearly 250,000 Hispanic and non-Hispanic seniors (aged 65 or older) across the U.S. READ MORE
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