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Tuesday, October 19, 2004
3

Using the Registry to Track and Improve School Immunization Rates

Cherie Thomas1, Rosie McLaren2, and Karyn L. Berry2. (1) (for the Washington, DC Immunization Program), Trey Industries, Inc, PO Box 2508, Locust Grove, VA, USA, (2) District of Columbia Department of Health, 1131 Spring Road, NW, Washington DC, DC, USA


BACKGROUND:
Through an active and innovative collaboration with many partners and the public school system, DC has successfully achieved school immunization rates for its over 65,000 enrolled children that are among the highest, most accurate in the country. This initiative’s success linked “old school” front-line data collection and clinical outreach by school nurses with “high-tech” data entry, analysis and reporting from the DC Immunization Registry. The collaboration was able to systematically improve public school immunization data collection and storage; identify and correct errors in immunization delivery; and incrementally raise school immunization rate from 40% to over 90% in three years.

OBJECTIVE:
1. Use local partnerships to link traditional and high-technology quality-improvement strategies to overcome limited resources and achieve outstanding school immunization rates.
2. Identify and track immunization compliance levels for all public school children.
3. Use Registry for quality improvement, improve overall immunization rates and accuracy.

METHOD:
Monthly and quarterly immunization compliance levels in each school are reported to the Health Department, School System, and School Nurses. The school nurses are provided with recall/reminder lists of students, who are "non-compliant" with immunization requirements. Reminder/recall of non-compliant clients is conducted via telephone, mail, and home visits. Updated records for clients are delivered to the Immunization Program from the school nurses for data entry into the Registry.

RESULT:
The DC public school immunization rate improved from 40% (June 2001) to over 90% (June 2004).

CONCLUSION:
Through partnerships and hard work, Immunization Registries can be an integral component of monitoring and ensuring immunization compliance for school students.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
To examine the role of a registry in a partnership to monitor immunization compliance in an inner-city school setting.

[ Recorded presentation ]   Recorded presentation

See more of School-Based Immunization Reporting Systems
See more of The 2004 Immunization Registry Conference