School-Located Influenza Vaccination Toolkit

Background:
Universal childhood influenza vaccination recommendations pose logistical challenges to health care providers and immunization programs across the country. Physician offices generally do not have the capacity to immunize all school-age children. School-located immunization clinics, which involves collaborations between schools and public health departments, offer an opportunity to reach a higher percentage of school-age children.

Objectives:
By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: 1) identify successful local strategies and new partnerships that impact influenza vaccine uptake amongst children attending school; 2) describe key activities that impact the sustainability of school-located influenza vaccination clinics; and 3) know the key tools that can help health departments work effectively with schools to implement school-located influenza vaccination clinics.

Methods:
NACCHO convened an in-person workgroup meeting of exemplary state and local health departments that have conducted school-located influenza vaccination clinics. Each participant presented their jurisdiction's experience providing annual influenza vaccinations in schools, highlighted key lessons learned, and discussed the evaluation results of their activities to develop transferable tools and products for use by other health departments.

Results:
The information and materials shared by the workgroup members, such as checklists, workplans, assessment and evaluation tools, consent forms, and letters to parents, was bundled into a comprehensive toolkit that will be made available for other jurisdictions to use to plan and execute school-located influenza vaccination clinics.

Conclusions:
School-located influenza vaccination clinics have not been widely conducted within recent years. Few school systems have sufficient infrastructure to conduct such programs. Partnering with LHDs helps schools provide access to influenza vaccine and helps build community public health infrastructure.