Study: Military children might not be getting all their vaccines

Researchers have found that military children might not be receiving all of the recommended vaccines, or they are missing medical records that can prove they actually did have their immunizations.

The study's lead author, Dr. Angela Dunn, said that each scenario — too few vaccines or lack of documentation — is troublesome for military children. "Both have a risk factor," she told NBC News. "They move around a lot, they don't have the same primary care providers all throughout childhood. All of these risk factors can cause them to be undervaccinated and also not to have documentation."

For the study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, researchers looked at the immunization records of 3,421 military children between the ages of 19 months to 3 years. They discovered that 28 percent did not have proof that they were up to date on their vaccines, compared to 21 percent of the general population that the researchers studied. Dunn says there needs to be further investigation into the exact reason behind the lower coverage rates. "I don't want the message to be 'Oh, my God, military kids aren't being taken care of,'" she said. "We don't know that."

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