WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) Jul 31 - US government health officials announced a new round of demonstration projects Wednesday aimed at narrowing the gap in immunization rates between elderly white and minority Americans.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) unveiled a 2-year plan to organize doctors, insurers, and community groups in five localities around efforts to boost the number of elderly minority Americans receiving annual influenza and pneumococcal vaccinations.

Sixty-seven percent of white seniors, but only 56% of Hispanics and 48% of blacks, were vaccinated against influenza in 2000, according to HHS. Fifty-seven percent of whites and 30% of blacks and Hispanics were immunized for pneumococcal diseases.

Claude Allen, the second-ranking official at HHS, called the figures unacceptable. "In the areas of adult immunization, we are not doing as well as we should be doing," he said.

Officials said they would spend $250,000 to $400,000 in each of five minority communities looking for ways to help doctors and community groups bring in more elderly persons for vaccinations. Funds will be sent to Rochester, NY; Chicago; Milwaukee; San Antonio; and Mississippi.

Adolescents are another group with suboptimal immunization rates, experts warned. Just 44% of adolescents in one 2000 survey had received the full complement of immunizations against hepatitis B. Dr. Bonnie Word, a pediatrician who serves on the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practice of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, pointed out that few doctors check up on immunizations when they see adolescent patients.

"The adolescent has not fared as well" as younger children, she said. Many laws requiring vaccinations for all elementary and middle school children are not properly enforced, and many low-income parents remain unaware that federal programs pay for all childhood and adolescent vaccines, according to Dr. Word.

Officials reported that overall childhood immunization rates held steady in 2001, despite shortages of several key vaccines. National vaccination rates ticked up slightly from 76% of children in 2000 to 77% in 2001, though regional disparities remain, said Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization Program at the CDC.