Effectiveness of community health worker interventions in improving vaccination coverage.
Annotatsiya
Background: Incomplete immunization remains a major public health challenge, particularly in underserved communities where access barriers, poor follow-up, and limited awareness contribute to suboptimal vaccination coverage. Objective: To assess the effectiveness of community health worker interventions in improving vaccination coverage. Methods: This was a quasi-experimental study conducted at Hayat Abad Medical Complex- MTI Peshawar from June 2024 to June 2025 including 210 participants/households to assess the effectiveness of community health worker interventions in improving vaccination coverage. Results: Full vaccination coverage increased significantly from 29.5% to 73.3% (p<0.001), while incomplete immunization declined from 70.5% to 26.7%. Mean missed vaccine doses decreased from 2.8 ± 1.4 to 1.1 ± 0.9 (p<0.001), timely vaccination improved from 33.8% to 69.5%, and dropout between vaccine doses decreased from 22.9% to 8.1%. At follow-up, the intervention group had higher full vaccination coverage than the comparison group (80.0% vs 66.7%; p=0.031) and lower missed doses (0.8 ± 0.7 vs 1.4 ± 1.0; p=0.004). Combined receipt of three or more community health worker activities achieved the highest full vaccination coverage (85.5%). Conclusion: Community health worker interventions significantly improved vaccination coverage and immunization-related outcomes..