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A summary of presentations from the weekly Summit partner webinars

June 12, 2025 – The latest Summit Summary

Vaccine Integration into Dental – Kelsey Vincent, RN, Vaccine Program Manager, Chiricahua Community Health Centers, Inc.

Kelsey Vincent, RN, gave an update about integrating vaccine delivery into dental appointments.

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Vaccine Integration into Dental – Kelsey Vincent, RN
The pandemic drove down vaccinations for children: 25 million children worldwide missed their vaccines due to the pandemic, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). In response, Chiricahua Community Health Centers, Inc. (CCHCI) began a program to provide dental patients with opportunities to get vaccinated at dental appointments.

Project Design & Implementation

  • Survey dental patients on willingness to receive vaccines at dentist appointments
  • Establish collaboration between dental and vaccine teams
  • Create dental LPN job description and training
  • Create revenue cycle processes for sustainable funding
  • Procure equipment and licensing, including Vaccines for Children (VFC)
  • Establish ongoing collaborative discussion regarding workflows and vaccine administration

Pre-Implementation Survey Data
From June through December of 2022, the CCHCI-led survey gathered data that showed the following reported willingness to receive vaccines at dental clinic appointments:

  • Pediatric: Accepted, 50.2%; Refused, 21.6%, Unsure, 28.2%
  • Adult: Accepted, 54.2%, Refused, 28.5%, Unsure, 17.3%

As a result of this data, CCHCI decided to move forward with the dental integration of vaccination.

The Services
All patients coming into CCHCI dental facilities for dental appointments are pre-screened for current or overdue vaccine recommendations and offered the vaccines they need during the appointment. All routine vaccinations — including COVID-19 — are offered to all patients (all ages) and accompanying friends or family members.

  • Patients who agree are given their vaccines before or after their dental appointment.
  • Patients who refuse are given vaccine information statements and can talk with a nurse or medical assistant onsite.

Program Results
Since the program inception in May 2023 and through May 2025:

  • 3,709 vaccine doses have been administered
  • The overall acceptance rate was 37.5%
    • The adult acceptance rate was 44.4%
    • The pediatric acceptance rate was 29.8%
  • The vaccines given most often to pediatric patients were influenza (25.3%), HPV (18.3%), COVID-19 (9.8%), and MenB (9.1%).
    • HPV was one of the biggest uptakes for pediatric vaccines. And, because of this uptake rate, CCHCI has created targeted HPV oral health materials (posters and flyers) for dental offices.
  • The vaccines given most often to adult patients were influenza (40.8%), COVID-19 (17%), and TDaP (17.2%).

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Q: How is billing done? Do you bill on the medical side? And the LPN that’s doing the counseling or assessment with the patient, are they supervised by a physician or some other medical staff? How does that work?
Kelsey Vincent (CCHCI): Yes, since we’re an FQHC and we’re integrated with medical and dental, it’s all under our medical provider: they operate under standing orders and then we bill under the medical insurance.

Q: Regarding the pediatric patients that opted not to get doses in the dental clinic, do you think they were then more likely to go back and get caught up in the medical side? And relatedly, do you feel like the proportion that accepted vaccinations was similar for people seeing the dental clinic as it was in the medical clinic or you think those were different?
Kelsey Vincent (CCHCI): I think the ones that would not vaccinate in the dental clinics are part of our vaccine-hesitant group already. So they’re probably not going to vaccinate in the medical clinic either. But I think we see a good portion, pretty much anyone that comes into the dental clinic that will receive vaccines, is already receiving vaccines elsewhere. A lot of the refusals and denials that we see, we’re seeing the same thing in our medical clinics as well. The only time that we really see someone who usually vaccinates but doesn’t vaccinate in the medical or in the dental facility is if the kid had maybe like a little bit of an operation and already went through enough stress that day. The parents usually forego [or don’t do it that day], but [when they come in for things] like routine cleanings…the parents are very supportive of getting them vaccinated.

Q: How do you manage reimbursement? Anything additional you want to say about that that you didn’t already answer?
Kelsey Vincent (CCHCI): It is all through medical. It’s basically like a nurse visit. We’re just doing it at the dental site since we are integrated with both medical and dental.

Q: Were you surprised about the HPV uptake?
Kelsey Vincent (CCHCI): Yes, it did surprise us quite a bit. Not that we have [really] poor HPV vaccine uptake within the clinics, but it’s just usually one of those vaccines that parents are always hesitant about. It’s not required for school. So, when we’ve been able to approach it from an oral health perspective and preventing oral cancers, and it’s not just for females, it’s for males, in combination with starting at age 9, we’ve had a quite a bit of uptake with it. And it’s been great to see that we can approach it differently and talk the parents into accepting it. We’re making that strong secondary provider recommendation. They’re getting it once with their PCP or primary provider and then they walk into the dental clinic and they’re getting that secondary strong recommendation with the dental providers and the dental team. I think that’s helping us.

Q: Who is actually administering the vaccines? Is it the dentist, the hygienist, both, or is it the LPN who’s doing it?
Kelsey Vincent (CCHCI): I have one facility where an LPN administers, and the second facility is a dental/medical facility, together, and the MA administers.

Q: Which vaccines did you select to do an assessment for, or are you assessing for all routinely recommended vaccines for both adults and children?
Kelsey Vincent (CCHCI): Correct: At least one day, if not a few days before, the team goes through and reviews everyone’s immunization records on the Arizona State Immunization Information System (ASIIS), that’s our state reporting system, to see what they are eligible for, what they don’t have, and what we can offer them at the time of the visit.

Q: Have the dentists also received training so that they can administer if they choose to?
Kelsey Vincent (CCHCI): We have not done any dental administration training yet. They help provide education on why [people] may want to get the vaccines, especially the HPV, specifically, and try to offer the [vaccinations] to them if they have a discussion about it. But then usually our LPN will also answer more questions and educate, if that needs to be happen. But no, none of our dental staff is trained to administer.

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Science of Immunity, Education Platform Demonstration – Joy Eckert, MPH, Research Manager at Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA

Joy Eckert, MPH, gave an update about the Science of Immunity educational platform.

Science of Immunity, Education Platform Demonstration – Joy Eckert, MPH
The Science of Immunity is an education platform designed and created by the Reagan-Udall Foundation, which is an independent nonprofit organization that supports the mission of the FDA. The Science of Immunity was supported by private foundations, rather than the US government.

Project Mission
Deliver engaging and interactive instructional material, mapped to state learning requirements, created for educators and middle school students in traditional and non-traditional learning settings.

  • The Science of Immunity was designed as a middle school curriculum.
  • The pilot was focused on NC state standards for middle school science.
  • There is hope to grow the platform to reach more people with the materials that have been developed.

Project Vision
Through digital and video content, the project focuses on information about the immune system, how vaccines work, and how vaccines are researched and regulated. The materials are:

  • Species agnostic
  • Designed to meet educators and learners where they are
  • Free
  • Publicly available

Development Process
The development process included three key points:

  • Identifying the specific audience: Middle schoolers
  • Selecting information sources: Content is based on information from the FDA and other HHS agencies
  • Holding focus groups: A series of three focus groups with science educators in NC were used to inform design and delivery

Live Platform Demonstration
There was a live platform demonstration of ScienceofImmunity.org. Highlights of the demonstration included:

  • A short login page — use is free to all.
  • A series of 5 topics that can be used throughout a full week in the classroom or as needed, in any order, based on what is most useful to the educator and students.
  • Topic activities (3 to 4 per topic) — including background, videos, step-by-step guides for educators, and activity parts according to science education’s 5Es — that can be used in a classroom or in a non-traditional setting (e.g., libraries, after school programs, clubs, etc.)
  • The curriculum field map, which includes activities, standards, and highlights of broader set of specific skills related to the field of science.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Q: What kind of feedback are you getting? Do you get any from the parents? What are you hearing about it?
Joy Eckert (Reagan-Udall Fdn): Going into this project, we really didn’t know what we were going to hear going into those focus groups with educators, especially we didn’t know if folks would be open to this, if they felt like trying to teach this in the classroom might open them up to other issues. But we were really happy, we were very encouraged that educators responded positively to this idea. And we haven’t heard from folks who’ve said, “Well, I could never teach this or I wouldn’t feel comfortable teaching this in my classroom.” We haven’t heard feedback from folks like parents or students themselves yet. But thankfully, we’ve heard very positive feedback so far. We’ve been greeted with lots of excitement, but the areas of opportunity, where we still hope to make progress, [include] having more printable materials available on the website. We’ve heard, especially for folks working in agriculture education, that having more [printable] materials can really help extend the reach of the materials, just given technology challenges for some learners at home.

Q: What about Spanish language translation?
Joy Eckert (Reagan-Udall Fdn): That’s been another area of opportunity that came up in this initial pilot year. North Carolina was a great incubator space for this project because we got to hear from such a wide variety of folks. But language translation, and especially Spanish language translation, was something that came up and so [that is] certainly an area that we hope to explore eventually.

Q: How does that work with the foundation, which supports FDA: What is that relationship?
Joy Eckert (Reagan-Udall Fdn): This was something that we were careful about whenever we were conceptualizing this project: Not just FDA, but health agencies like CDC, [have] very rigid standards for how they must communicate about medical products. FDA puts out a very technical label for all medical products and they very rarely deviate from communicating about products from outside those kinds of things. There’s lots and lots of information that they must include. And it’s not always going to be the most user friendly; it’s not easy to access that kind of information. The FDA wasn’t formally involved in this project at all. We were able to tell our friends at the agency that we were doing this, but they didn’t have any formal role in weighing in about the direction of the material or what should or shouldn’t be included. And so that left us a lot more flexibility in deciding what and how we communicated about the material in a way that we hope really makes it user friendly and still is delivering accurate and science-based information, but in a way that can be accessible to a broad audience.

Q: How is it introduced into the middle school curriculum?
Joy Eckert (Reagan-Udall Fdn): So far, we have mostly been doing outreach outside of formal state education channels. We’ve found lots of other ways of connecting with teachers through education organizations and other mechanisms. The goal of this was not to make this mandatory education for anyone. That was one of the great benefits we found of working in North Carolina, to begin with, that folks felt like they had a lot of flexibility. And so, we’ve tried to be thoughtful and strategic about the way we’ve been reaching out to teachers so as not to make anyone feel like this is being forced on them.

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US Adult Vaccine Uptake Dashboard – Diana Olson, Senior Director, Strategic Communications, National Foundation for
Infectious Diseases and Melissa Persaud, Vice President, Accounts, fraym

Diana Olson and Melissa Persaud gave an update about the US Adult Vaccine Uptake Dashboard.

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US Adult Vaccine Uptake Dashboard – Diana Olson and Melissa Persaud
Using Hyperlocal Data to Increase US Adult Vaccine Uptake: NFID partnered with Fraym on a pilot project to deliver novel hyperlocal insights to public health stakeholders working at the local level to try to increase vaccine uptake across the United States. The goal of the project is to assist in the allocation of resources from the front line to equitably reach populations across the country.

NFID Pilot Program Overview
The pilot project focused on the adult population and four diseases: COVID-19, influenza (flu), RSV, and pneumococcal disease. Key pieces of the US Vaccine Uptake Dashboard project include:

  • Localized data for every state, county, and zip code across the country
  • Seed funding for a data-driven approach
  • Pilot database
  • Goals: Empower public health stakeholders, assist outreach and service delivery on the front lines, equitably reach populations across the country
  • Currently, NFID is seeking sustainable funding for the long term and to support data refresh and expansion; use cases and user feedback are also being collected

Live Dashboard Demonstration
There was a live platform demonstration on the NFID website: www.NFID.org/us-vaccine-uptake-dashboard/. Highlights of the demonstration included:

  • Geographic coverage of data, including segmentation of data by vaccine, state, and zip code
    • This is possible by augmenting survey data with machine learning and AI to produce the best estimate of population characteristics (i.e., modeled data)
    • The model data can convey intent to vaccinate down to hyperlocal levels
  • The Immunization Outreach page
    • Weaves together various data points to reveal drivers of behavior, which may support the shaping of targeted messages
    • Reveals indicators for trusted messengers and sources of medical information and how this information might help outreach and target campaigns to specific audiences for specific themes
  • The Community Summary page
    • Brings all the data together and summarizes top concerns, shaping of messages, and trusted voices information for targeted diseases and specific audiences

Fraym is a technology company that produces data at the hyperlocal level, including globally. The company has experience pairing vaccine-related data with outreach data, such as trusted sources, media channels, and more, all at the local level.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Q: Are all states currently included in the dashboard?
Melissa Persaud (Fraym): Yes, all states are included.

Q: Because vaccine reporting varies by from state to state, how is that handled?
Melissa Persaud (Fraym): That’s where it’s important to distinguish between available and what is publicly available or shared. So, we are presenting self-reported data on intent to get vaccinated and not measuring coverage or actual shots in arms. We have many users who are using this data side-by-side with their coverage measures and making decisions on where the gaps are, where there’s a high intent [to receive vaccination] and perhaps low uptake, and targeting that way.

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Announcements
  • Slide presentations from the May 13–15, 2025 Summit are currently available at www.izsummitpartners.org/2025-naiis/.
  • The next scheduled Summit Weekly Update is July 10, 2025.
    • The Summit will be sending updates to partners via email, considering the rapidly changing immunization environment.
    • Partners are welcome to submit announcements, press releases, and other communications that may be valuable to the community so that the Summit can disseminate relevant information.
  •  LetsGetRealAboutVaccines.org will be live on June 17.

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