KEYWORDS:
health care providers, continuing education, CE, immunizations, medical offices, barriers, vaccine preventable diseases, statistics, compliance

BACKGROUND:
Health care providers play a critical role in convincing individuals and families to make appropriate immunization decisions. This makes them a key target for continuing education (CE) by immunization advocacy groups.

OBJECTIVE:
A Speaker’s Bureau talk was developed to motivate and prepare health care providers (especially those working directly with patients), to promote compliance with established immunization guidelines. We will demonstrate the contents and utilization of this program.

METHOD:
A PowerPoint presentation was developed with visual slides as well as standardized bullet point notes. Material for the presentation was drawn from national and local immunization statistics, CDC/ACIP guidelines on pediatric and adult immunization, and from the literature describing vaccine preventable diseases and barriers to immunization compliance. A special focus was placed on those barriers that can be affected by medical office based health care providers. Speaker's Bureau volunteers advertise, and present this program upon request.

RESULT:
The presentation addresses the following topics: Vaccine preventable diseases; immunization compliance statistics and issues; barriers to appropriate immunization; and a discussion of strategies to promote optimal immunization. Between August 2000 and November, 2002, this CE offering was presented to approximately 24 professional groups, reaching roughly 350 individual professionals. The presentation has been electronically distributed nationally and internationally, on request, at no charge, to more than 150 other immunization advocates.

CONCLUSION:
One role of immunization advocacy groups is to offer continuing education for health care providers. Such programs should stress provider's essential role in promoting appropriate immunization for the patients they serve. In light of always scarce resources, immunization advocacy groups have an obligation to share their educational resources with other groups.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
To present a resource used for continuing education of medical office based health care professionals about relevant immunization promotion topics.