Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health conducted an analysis of worldwide use of Haemophilus influenza Type b vaccine (Hib) to determine what factors influenced a nation's adoption of the vaccine. The study found that a nation's eligibility for support from the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunization (GAVI) and whether a country's neighbors used the vaccine were major influencing factors in addition to price of the vaccine. The findings appear in the March 16 edition of PLoS Medicine.

"This study is the first to measure how countries' decisions to adopt new vaccines are highly influenced by their neighbors' decisions," said the study's lead author, Jessica Shearer, MHS, a former research associate at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"GAVI has been hoping to accelerate the speed at which poor countries get access to life-saving vaccines. This study shows how successful these efforts have actually been," said David Bishai, MD, PhD, MPH, senior author of the study and associate professor in the Bloomberg School's departments of Population, Family and Reproductive Health and International Health.