The school year is in full swing, and our new program, Stats4Vax: Improving teen vaccination rates one school nurse at a time (Stats4Vax) is off to a strong start. If you haven’t yet had the chance to visit www.Stats4Vax.com, I encourage you to learn about the program and the support, materials, and tools it provides for school nurses like you and other healthcare providers to help guide conversations with parents/guardians to see that teens are up-to-date on their immunizations.
Our students are at their best when they are healthy, in school, and ready to learn. But we need your help. Millions of students remain under-vaccinated against serious infectious diseases.1,2 That’s why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that teens receive the following four vaccines:
- Meningococcal vaccine (two doses)
- Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine (full 3-dose series)
- Tdap vaccine
- Flu vaccine (each year)
To help you make an even bigger difference in your students’ health, be sure to visit the Stats4Vax Resource Library, which contains many easy-to-use materials and tools that can be tailored to meet the needs of your student population. Materials include a talk track with messages to help you proactively discuss the importance of vaccination with students; a letter to be sent home to parents/guardians; and content to help educate parents/guardians about teen vaccination that can be disseminated via social media, school newsletters, or the school website. Check out the Stats4Vax Resource Library for ideas and materials to help boost your impact!
And don’t forget about the Stats4Vax Challenge, which is currently being piloted in three states! If you’re located in North Carolina, California, or Florida, I encourage you to join NASN’s first-ever Stats4Vax Challenge, which aims to uncover and improve student vaccination rates in high schools in these states over the course of this school year. The nurse whose school sees the biggest change in student vaccination rates will be the grand prize winner. What is the grand prize? An all-expense paid trip to the 2018 NASN Annual Conference! So start tracking those stats, and keep an eye out for the announcement of the winner in August!
We can’t wait to see how you make the Stats4Vax Challenge your own and help improve teen vaccination rates in your schools this year!
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References
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2015). National, Regional, State, and Selected Local Area Vaccination Coverage Among Adolescents Aged 13–17 Years — United States, 2014. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6533a4.htm?s_cid=mm6533a4_e.
- United States Census Bureau. (2013). Age and Sex Composition in the United States. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/population/age/data/2012comp.html.
