Universally Recommended Vaccinations: Client Reminder & Recall Systems

Client reminder and recall interventions involve reminding members of a target population that vaccinations are due (reminders) or late (recall). Reminders and recalls differ in content and are delivered by various methods—telephone, letter, postcard, or other. Most reminder systems involve a specific notification for a specific client, and may be accompanied by educational messages regarding the importance of immunization for the targeted vaccine.

Summary of Task Force Recommendations & Findings

The Community Preventive Services Task Force recommends reminder and recall interventions based on strong evidence of effectiveness in improving vaccination coverage:

• In children and adults
• In a range of settings and populations
• When applied at different levels of scale from individual practice settings to entire communities
• Across a range of intervention characteristics (e.g., reminders and recall, content, theoretical basis and method of delivery)
• When used alone or with additional components

Task Force Finding & Rationale Statement

 

Results of the Original & Updated Systematic Reviews

The Task Force recommendation is based on evidence from an original review (search period 1980-1997) and an updated review (search period 1997-2007). Updates of reviews are conducted to incorporate more recent evidence.

Learn more about the original review and Task Force finding in the Vaccinations to Prevent Diseases section of our publications page.

Original Review (search period 1980–1997)

Forty-two studies qualified for the original systematic review.

• Median increase in vaccination coverage: 12 percentage points (54 study arms)

Updated Review (search period 1997–2007)

Twenty studies were identified in the search period considered in this update.

• Median increase in vaccination coverage:
  • Overall: 6.1 percentage points (20 studies)
  • Client reminder and recall alone: 5.1 percentage points (12 studies)
  • Client reminder and recall combined with additional components: 10 percentage points (8 studies)
• Reviewed studies evaluated the effectiveness of client reminder and recall interventions in a wide range of client and provider populations and settings.

These updated results were based on a recent systematic review of available studies, by a team of specialists in systematic review methods, and experts in research, practice and policy related to vaccinations to prevent diseases.

Publications

The findings and results of this systematic review have not been published. Read other Community Guide publications about Vaccinations to Prevent Diseases in our library, including articles about the previous review. You may also subscribe to be notified as new materials on this topic become available.

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Sample Citation

The content of publications of the Guide to Community Preventive Services is in the public domain. Citation as to source, however, is appreciated. Sample citation: Guide to Community Preventive Services. Universally recommended vaccinations: client reminder & recall systems (abbreviated). www.thecommunityguide.org/vaccines/universally/clientreminder.html. Last updated: MM/DD/YYYY.

Review completed: February 2008