Learning Objectives for this Presentation:
By the end of the presentation, participants will understand the 1) impact of influenza vaccine supply disruptions on local public health practice; 2) financial hardships of delayed deliveries to local health departments; and 3) local difficulty in implementing CDC's tiered recommendations due to delayed deliveries in 2005-06.

Background:
The National Association of County & City Health Officials (NACCHO) surveys 120 sentinel local health departments (LHDs) every influenza season to monitor their experiences with influenza vaccine supply, delivery, and distribution.

Objectives:
The 2005-06 sentinel survey sought to determine whether LHDs were experiencing spot shortages of influenza vaccine, delayed deliveries of vaccine, and to document and characterize their responses if spot shortages and delayed deliveries were occuring locally.

Methods:
An e-mail query was sent to the 120 sentinel sites, which are located in all 50 states and represent the diversity of local public health practice.

Results:
Common themes from the sentinels included: 1) they were making contingency plans to cancel and/or delay clinics if supply did not improve; 2) they delayed publicizing their mass clinics due to limited supplies of vaccine; and 3) they were struggling to implement CDC's tiered recommendations and target high-priority populations by October 24th.

Conclusions:
The sentinel survey results characterized the vaccine supply disruption experiences of many communities across the country and helped inform CDC about local-level activities to alleviate the consequences of these supply and distribution problems.