A Successful Story - Using An Immunization Information System to Assist the Implementation of AB354

Background: Prior to AB354, it was estimated that 47% of 7^th -12^th grade students in San Diego County had Tdap vaccines.  A system of quickly and accurately assessing the Tdap status and generating automatic reminder/recall for schools was important to the success of implementing AB354.  Using the San Diego Immunization Registry (SDIR), school staff could review Tdap status prior to student enrollment, generate and print documentation, and create a list of students who still required a dose

Setting: There are 530 public and private schools with 244,000 7-12^th grade students in San Diego County.  SDIR staff had developed strong relationships with local schools prior to AB354. Thirty-nine out of 42 districts had read-only access to SDIR and were trained to use it for assessing the immunization status of their students.  Staff at one of the largest school districts was able to directly enter the vaccine information into SDIR

Population: San Diego public, private and in-home schools educating 7^th-12^th graders

Project Description: Immunization Program staff conducted a series of onsite SDIR trainings for school staff and gathered feedback. Staff also worked to enhance SDIR with the feature of uploading school rosters into the system and modifying the report to meet the school requirement

Results/Lessons Learned: Over 1,000 staff in both public and private schools were trained.  The largest district has 57,590 student immunization information uploaded to SDIR, was able to generate electronic reminder/recall, and ultimately reached 100% compliancy. With potential SDIR users in all schools, traditional hands-on training won’t be able to meet the demand.  Developing innovative methods by utilizing high technology such as WebEx is needed