Providing Technical Assistance for Aggregate Doses Administered Using Seasonal Flu as a Proxy for Pandemic Flu Preparedness

Background:
The National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza: Implementation Plan calls for monitoring appropriate use of scarce pre-pandemic/pandemic influenza vaccine. Guidance disseminated in December 2006 to use seasonal flu as a proxy for pandemic flu preparedness since it closely resembles a public health campaign lasting several weeks. Twenty-five clinics participated in the collection of reporting requirements to track vaccine doses administered at the patient level and then sent a subset of the data to CDC weekly as requested.

Setting:
Mass vaccination clinics, rural versus urban, 4 vaccinations per hour(ph)and 500 ph.

Population:
Adult, homeless, non-english speaking, infants, pregnant women, and children.

Project Description:
Aggregate reporting of required doses administeration to CDC

Results/Lessons Learned:
Several lessons were learned as part of this experience; including various clinic models deployed in rural versus urban and mass vaccination settings (e.g., 500 per hour, 4 vaccinations per hour, etc).
Several needs were identified in providing technical assistance including: faster more expedient methods to capture required doses administered reporting information, assistance in capturing the priority groups, and removal of paper data collection forms to integrate real time data entry into the clinic work flow.
Other conclusions including the importance of capturing the required doses administered information nearest the real time as possible to protect the population should a disaster occur. It would also become necessary for real time reports to the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) for example, snap shots showing information by local public health, points of dispensing, regions, and project area gives those tasked with making public health decisions in times of crisis more information that will guide countermeasure response.
Special populations served by the clinic and planning steps needed to include such populations (e.g, homeless, non-english speaking, infants, pregnant women, etc