Implementing a School-Located Vaccination Program in Denver Public Schools

Practical Approaches to Optimize Adolescent Immunization

With the expansion of the adolescent immunization schedule during the past decade, immunization rates notably vary by vaccine and by state. Addressing barriers to improving adolescent vaccination rates is a priority. Every visit can be viewed as an opportunity to update and complete an adolescent's immunizations. It is essential to continue to focus and refine the appropriate techniques in approaching the adolescent patient and parent in the office setting. Health care providers must continuously strive to educate their patients and develop skills that can help parents and adolescents overcome vaccine hesitancy. Research on strategies to achieve higher vaccination rates is ongoing, and it is important to increase the knowledge and implementation of these strategies. This clinical report focuses on increasing adherence to the universally recommended vaccines in the annual adolescent immunization schedule of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. This will be accomplished by (1) examining strategies that heighten confidence in immunizations and address patient and parental concerns to promote adolescent immunization and (2) exploring how best to approach the adolescent and family to improve immunization rates.

HPV vaccine uptake in a school-located vaccination program

Previous research has implied that while parents may be willing to have their adolescents receive some recommended vaccines via school-located vaccination program (SLVP), they were less likely to agree to the HPV vaccine being administered via SLVP. During an SLVP in a large urban area, 86% of those participating in the program received an HPV vaccine.

School-located vaccination for adolescents: Past, present, and future and implications for HPV vaccine delivery

Adolescents were first specifically targeted for school-located vaccination (SLV) in the 1990s when hepatitis B catch-up vaccination was recommended for all adolescents. SLV affords the opportunity to access adolescents at a time when their activities have developmental import and the patients have the capacity to decline repeatedly missing school and extracurricular events to get vaccinated. As noted above, SLV has been primarily reserved for brief catch-up interventions among youth, with routine vaccination recommendations quickly defaulting to the primary care provider. Now in 2016, with relatively disappointing adolescent immunization rates for the routinely recommended human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, the SLV option is one that could potentially help increase vaccination rates for a particularly effective, life-saving, 3-dose vaccination series. This article will serve as a brief review of the successful use of SLV in other countries, lessons learned when SLV was employed to immunize adolescents against hepatitis B in the United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the current hopes and challenges for the future of adolescent SLV programming in the United States. Overall, the shift to the use of SLV to administer routinely recommend vaccine for adolescents will require careful planning to implement known strategies for accessing youth and in addition to new strategies designed to assure appropriate reimbursement for cost-effect SLV services. While not the best option for all adolescents, SLV provides an important opportunity to immunize youth with limited access to healthcare services in the community at large.