Implementing and Sustaining School-Located Influenza Vaccination Programs

Abstract

Local health departments have typically led school-located influenza vaccination (SLIV) programs, assuming resource-intensive roles in design, coordination, and vaccination. This level of involvement is often not financially sustainable over time. Five diverse school districts in Los Angeles County designed, implemented, refined, and institutionalized their own SLIV programs over 3 years by identifying and maximizing their existing resources. School district nurses and other staff served as project leaders, designing their own vaccination administration process, parental consent, and clinic promotional models. Two districts expanded their existing school immunization clinics and three developed their vaccination capacity with community partnerships. Each district tailored its program in creative resource-minimum ways, sometimes abandoning or adopting new methods/technologies based on the effectiveness in previous seasons. The shared experiences and strategies between district nurses and the local health department described in this article illustrate a district's ability to develop a tailor-made SLIV program, often in less than ideal conditions.

School-based vaccination programmes: a systematic review of the evidence on organisation and delivery in high income countries

“…No single model was associated with a greater likelihood of success. Rather, programmes evolved over consecutive seasons in response to leadership from school staff, and experience of running the programme which built up the confidence for school managers to implement cost-effective improvements [54]. …”

“…The need for long lead in times — with preparation preferably starting the year before vaccination — was referred to in several descriptive and qualitative papers from the UK and the US, as necessary for developing organisational relationships [22, 26, 38, 54]. Long lead ins allowed for advance visits to schools to take place and early planning to avoid conflicts with school events [27].…”

“…Adding to evidence from US papers that many programmes felt under-funded, US studies also reported that it was not possible to run vaccination programmes within existing staff resources. Schools often depended on the use of additional paid staff as well as on volunteers from the Medical Reserve Corps (a network of locally organised health professionals), parents, law enforcement and nursing [26–28, 54]. …”

COVID-19: Planning and Postpandemic Partnerships

“…Fostering the relationship of student health and education requires a team approach, with public health partners, school system administrators, and parents all playing pivotal roles. Successful annual influenza vaccination programs are examples of fruitful collaboration between these stakeholders (Gicquelais et al, 2016;Wilson et al, 2013). Likewise, community health officials, school nurses, and administrators work together on isolated incidents such as in the case of a tuberculosis diagnosis (Galemore, 2016).…”

Association of School‐Based Influenza Vaccination Clinics and School Absenteeism—Arkansas, 2012‐2013

“…SBCs tailored to the resources and needs in local communities can help ensure that limited resources for SBCs are efficiently allocated. For instance, SBCs in Los Angeles County, California, were tailored to school district's needs by allowing school nurses to plan and implement SBC procedures . This ensured that immunizations were appropriately allotted to fit each school's demand for immunizations, communication efforts were tailored to particular parent groups, and methods to staff clinics with nurses were feasible for each school …”