Ariana Salaiz
WCAAP Program Manager
The second cohort of the WA-CHIP Adolescent Immunizations Learning Collaborative began March 2020 and wrapped-up January 2021. As adolescent immunizations were de-prioritized due to COVID-19, the WA-CHIP team decided that reminder/recall should be a mandatory intervention for all the clinics to implement. Immunization reminder-recall is a method to identify and notify families whose children are almost due for immunizations (reminder) or are already behind (recall). This is a powerful way to ensure optimal vaccination rates.
WA-CHIP cohort two consisted of nine participating clinics: five King County practices and four from Spokane County. Overall, the cohort decreased missed opportunities from 63% to 24%. Missed opportunities are defined as adolescents who are not up to date on their vaccines but fail to get vaccinated when patients go into to clinic. In this case, a lower percentage of missed opportunities means that more adolescents are being immunized during their appointments.
In addition to reducing missed opportunities by 39%, the nine clinics successfully contacted 2,438 adolescents that were due for vaccinations. This means that the clinics’ calls, postcards, and letters were successfully delivered to the receiving patient’s family.
The third cohort is kicking off March 25th! Clinics from King County and Kitsap County will be benefiting from the coaching and tools that the WA-CHIP Adolescent Learning Collaborative offers.
Due to COVID-19, adolescent vaccine coverage has dropped 35%-40%. For this reason, WCAAP and members have been working very hard on improving vaccination rates through many different avenues. This includes developing toolkits, South King county immunization pushes, and media coverage. We want to give many thanks to Jasmin Zavala for recent media coverage of vaccine catch up Pediatric vaccinations down nearly 40% for some age groups during the pandemic.
Editor’s note: Check out the “Vax 2 School” resources developed by WCAAP, WithinReach, and the Washington State Department of Health on the Immunity Community web page, including a social media toolkit in Spanish and English and “Dear Parent” letters in 10 languages.