Using routinely collected laboratory and health administrative data to assess influenza vaccine effectiveness: introducing the Flu and Other Respiratory Viruses Research (FOREVER) Cohort

IntroductionAnnual evaluation of influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) is required because of frequent changes to circulating and vaccine strains. Traditionally, VE studies enroll patients who fulfill case definitions for respiratory infections and are tested for influenza. VE estimates generated from convenience samples of routinely collected specimens might be biased. Objectives and ApproachWe assessed the validity of using data from …