August is National Immunization Awareness Month. Truly this is the perfect time to remind your community of the necessity for on-time vaccinations. It’s important to protect people of all ages against vaccine-preventable diseases. Get your plan together now. If you use our HRAs they can play a part in messaging to users who are proactive about their health.

Immunization Messaging

Our HRAs provide a great channel for health messaging to an audience who’ve shown they are interested in their health. For example, they can include up to 10 post-completion emails from our system. Use one of those emails to focus on health month messaging like National Immunization Awareness Month. Alternatively, you could add content to the footer of all 10 emails.

You can also fully customize the last page of the report to include health month messaging blurbs, like this:

ACIP Approves Simultaneous Vaccines

In the intense focus on COVID vaccines for the last 2 years, messaging about routine immunizations lost out. The good news is that on June 23, 2021 the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) issued a recommendation that help with this. It states that COVID and other routine vaccines can be given at the same time. Therefore, we should be banging this drum extra hard this year.

Accepted guidelines recommend annual influenza vaccination for all persons aged 6 months and older without contradictions. As such, ACIP’s approval includes co-administering influenza and COVID-19 vaccines. Accordingly, this is an opportunity to continue advocating for extending reach of the COVID-19 vaccine while also supporting routine immunizations.

Recommended Immunizations

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a list of recommended vaccinations for patients by age. A full list of the symptoms and consequences of vaccine-preventable diseases can be found on the CDC’s website.

How to Foster Vaccination Support

The CDC has educational resources about vaccination including a video series called #HowIRecommend that offers simple but practical guidance for having successful immunization conversations. The videos demonstrate how to make vaccine recommendations, answer common questions, and take a team-based approach to vaccination.

Summary

Back-to-school time is a good time to remind people to vaccinate their kids. Importantly, it is time to message your community about the importance of scheduling routine vaccinations for themselves and their children before school starts. To assist with this, the Medicom Health Risk Assessments have a robust follow-up messaging system that can help you to target your population with messages about immunization or COVID vaccination. In conclusion, feel free to reach out to our support representatives to learn more.