Learning Objectives for this Presentation:
By the end of the presentation, participants will be able to describe Philadelphia's evaluation plan to determine effectiveness of interventions promoting timely infant immunization.

Background:
Factors contributing to low childhood immunization rates include late receipt of immunizations due at age 2, 4 and 6 months. Children who are late for these early doses are more often not up-to-date for immunizations at 19 months. Encouraging receipt of infant immunizations on time is therefore important to achieving high immunization coverage rates.

Objectives:
Determine the impact on coverage of an initiative which promotes giving infant immunizations on-time at 2, 4, 6 and 12 months of age and DTaP4 six months after receipt of DTaP3.

Methods:
Compare coverage levels among practices adopting and not adopting policies promoting giving infant immunizations on-time. Coverage change also will be evaluated within practices before and after policy adoption. Multiple intervention arms will evaluate the impact of different methods of implementing the policies. One method will consist of mailing information describing the policy to providers; another will involve training providers; a third method will include reminders to inform parents when their child is due for 4, 6 and12 month vaccinations.

Results:
We will describe the evaluation plan developed to assess the implementation and impact of an immunization initiative promoting administration of infant immunizations on-time at age 2, 4, 6 and 12 months and DTaP4 six months after receipt of DTaP3.

Conclusions:
This evaluation plan may be useful to other organizations seeking to develop methods to evaluate effectiveness of similar interventions aimed at increasing childhood immunization coverage.