History of Immunize Kansas Kids
In 2004, when the National Immunization Survey released its findings, Kansas found out that it ranked 43rd in the nation for administering the standard vaccination series on time (4:3:1:3:3 vaccination series). This finding resulted in the call for a new partnership that could research barriers for vaccinating and develop and carry out a plan to address those barriers. Immunize Kansas Kids was created by the Kansas Health Foundation, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the Kansas Health Institute to support this mission. The coalition soon grew to include representatives from Kansas organizations that had a hand in the vaccine delivery system (e.g. local health departments, private providers, and school nurses).
The first goal of IKK was to develop Kansas-specific research on the root causes of the low immunization rate. Some of the preliminary reasons that were identified were the following:
- Patients were often not able to get vaccinations in their medical home
- The state immunization registry was not operating at a high enough capacity
- There were access issues for providing immunizations (such as low reimbursement rates)
- Parents and providers had barriers that made it difficult to receive vaccinations (such as insurance problems or vaccine storage)
From these and other identified barriers came a plan for improvement. This plan, written at the beginning of 2008, had the following goals:
- Increase children’s access to timely immunization in every possible venue, whether at the physician’s office, the local public health department or elsewhere
- Accelerate implementation of the statewide immunization registry
- Promote policies, regulations and environmental changes to increase immunization rates
- Stimulate community and parental demand for, and provider involvement in, immunization services
- Perform ongoing assessment and evaluation of the strategies and their success, and modify them based on the results.
The years following the 2008 plan focused on implementing the goals, but coalition involvement started to wane. In 2011, a new action plan that had the same goals plus an additional goal to involve community participation in the IKK model was created. This action plan was used to guide all future project activities.
The following achievements happened because of the many years of effort on the part of the IKK coalition and its dedicated members:
- Increased partnership and dialogue between the many immunization providers and vaccination supporters across the state
- Increased participation and robustness of the KS Immunization Registry
- Creation of numerous Kansas-specific immunization research and white papers
- Increased communication between health departments and providers
- Funding and implementation of the Maximizing Office Based Immunizations program
- Creation of a Kansas-specific vaccination manual
- Outreach to communities to teach them how to apply for, implement, and finish a grant along with quality improvement techniques
- Spreading of best practices for immunizations among coalition partners
These and other achievements culminated in the creation of a repository for the plethora of immunization information and techniques on the Kansas Health Matters website. This partnership helps create a legacy of the IKK work.