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A summary of presentations from the weekly Summit partner webinars

October 2, 2025 – The latest Summit Summary

IQVIA Respiratory Viral Vaccine Coverage Data – Nandini Selvam, PhD, MPH, VP & GM, IQVIA Government Solutions

Nandini Selvam, PhD, gave an update about respiratory viral vaccine coverage to date this season.

IQVIA Respiratory Viral Vaccine Coverage Data – Nandini Selvam, PhD, MPH
It is early in the season, but this presentation showed influenza vaccination coverage data to date.

At the person/patient level, the early data (with a caveat that it is too early to make strong conclusions) show:

  • Among adults 18+ years, from 2018 through 2025, there are higher rates of influenza vaccination in the 65+ age group compared to other age groups.
  • For 2025, vaccination rates in both urban and rural areas declined.
    • Black and Hispanic populations had lower vaccination rates compared to white and other populations, which has been a trend over time.
  • There is a decreasing trend for vaccination in the 18+ age group, when you compare vaccinations rates as of July 2025 to those as of July 2024, for their respective seasons, to see what leading indicators may be for the rest of this season.
  • The peaks for flu vaccination last season were:
    • 50 to 64 years: October 2024
    • 18 to 49 years: September 2024
    • 65+ years: November 2024
  • By race and income, the Asian/other group and the $100K+ income group had the highest vaccination rates, peaking at about 16.5% and 14%, respectively.
  • By payer and urban/rural, those with public insurance and those looking for care in urban areas had the highest vaccination rates.

Audit Trail Data
Based on National Prescription Audit (NPA), which provides data from the front end/retail face of pharmacies, early data show:

  • There was about a 10% decrease in the number of flu shots administered this season compared to last season at the same time.
  • Last year, administrations peaked around the middle of October.
  • The 60+ age group had consistently higher vaccination volumes compared to the 22 to 59 age group.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Q/Comment: Looking at the latest 2025 data, we’re significantly behind, even with the 60+ population here. So, the call to action here for the Summit partners is, if this trend continues, we’re looking at an additional 10% decline over last season in terms of vaccine coverage rates as measured by claims data. And last season was already … about 4% lower than the previous season, so the downward trend is striking.
Nandini Selvam (IQVIA): Yes, because it was 54.9% was the highest, [then it went from] 55% in 2021 to 49.5% — so about 5% decline — to 2022, and then from 49% to 42% — so a 6% decline — in 2023, and about 7% in 2024, and now, we don’t have enough [data], but it’s probably another dip.
L.J Tan (Immunize.org, NAIIS): And, if you look at the aggregate of the past four seasons, there have been about 50 million less vaccinations in this age group, in the 18+ group, which is very striking for all of us, because that’s a lot fewer people who have been protecting against the complications for influenza, and we had a really bad season last year. Now, again, correlation/causation, but you must wonder if we could be doing better protecting our public against flu.

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Voices for Vaccines Fall Communications Plan – Noah Louis-Ferdinand, Communications Coordinator, Voices for Vaccines

Noah Louis-Ferdinand gave updates about their organization’s fall communications plans.

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Voices for Vaccines Fall Communications Plan – Noah Louis-Ferdinand
Voices for Vaccines (VFV) is focusing on updating and creating stories for their communications. They are also drawing on past campaigns for influenza to provide more informational materials for influenza, RSV, and COVID this season.

Video Stories are being produced and pushed as much as possible:

  • Creating video interviews about influenza
  • Updating older flu stories
  • Analyzing data for the most popular existing stories and adding video to them
  • Being shared successfully on social (Threads, BlueSky, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and VFV is creating a resources toolkit for those who want to share
    • Because the videos on the YouTube channel are not getting as many views, VFV will be pushing them out directly
  • Videos can be co-branded, and VFV will make the adjustments for co-branding partners

Blog Stories may be underleveraged. Many stories focus on A&E and measles and the neurological effects of that disease. There are also many stories about RSV.

Written Content is typically the most effective way to get stories out, with a simple graphic designed to be pushed out on social media. These may include risk factors (like pregnancy) or risks introduced by contracting a particular disease (like increased cardiovascular risk). VFV has a collection of social graphics that can be used for messaging for flu, RSV, and COVID.

Why I Vax is a selfie campaign where people post selfies of themselves getting vaccinated and including the reason they vaccinate.

Social Media Working Group (associated with Immunize.org)
Every few weeks, the group sends graphics out on vaccination-related topics that are trending.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Q: Is there a celebrity voice that you can interview? Specifically, what about the Red Sox pitcher who missed a baseball season because of COVID-induced myocarditis?
Noah Louis-Ferdinand (VFV): I would love to, although just finding celebrity voices, obviously, is a lot of work, so I just haven’t had time to think about that too much. But, if there is one that [makes sense, like the baseball player that [you mentioned], I will look into that. It doesn’t hurt to reach out.

Q: Where can people send their vaccination selfies and things like that for you to use? And how can we help promote that effort?
Noah Louis-Ferdinand (VFV): The simplest way to submit them is to go to the Why I Vax page. That’s the page where you can submit directly. If you have more of them to send, just feel free to email me. To help promote them, [although] we have a standard format now, we don’t have a format for coalitions to share, so I’m going to work on that in the next week or two. As soon as we do [have that format], you’re welcome to post as many of those as you would like, and if you see one in that collection — because there’s tons of different posts there with many different reasons for vaccinating — just let me know, and I will create a graphic for each one.
L.J Tan (Immunize, NAIIS): There was a recommendation to seek to work with the hepatologist who is a U.S. Senator [Cassidy].

Q: Do you have advice or requests around commenting versus reposting versus posting to maximize engagement via the social media algorithm?
Noah Louis-Ferdinand (VFV): Generally, it’s going to be platform-specific, but I will just say that because there are so many different coalitions that are usually state-specific, or even community-specific, reach. If somebody posts a good graphic… like the Indiana Immunization Coalition has great graphics… but often there’s a limit to how many people they can reach. I think just posting them to the different coalition pages is probably the way to get the greatest reach overall, especially on platforms like Instagram, where sharing is not really a thing. I think, just because the overall followings for a lot of these pages are smaller, it’s good to cross-post them as much as you can.
Q/Comment: The Creative Coalition might be a good connection for people in the arts who might be willing to do an interview with regards to vaccine-preventable diseases.

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Families Fighting Flu Fall Communications Plan

Eric Stein, and Dana Howe, MS, gave updates about their organization’s fall communications plans.

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Families Fighting Flu (FFF) Fall Communications Plan – Eric Stein
For their respiratory season campaigns, FFF is focusing on tailoring the message and being strategic, including providing indigenous and Spanish resources. They are amplifying family stories and putting a face to flu experiences. Storytelling is 22x more effective than reporting statistics.

Social Media
FFF has identified the following tips for social media campaigning:

  • Play to a [social media] channel’s strengths
  • Tailor your message to the audience (e.g., make your message hyper-local, with regional accents, for instance)
  • Use trends to your advantage
  • Be relevant and spontaneous
  • Collaborate and repost
  • Don’t be afraid to pivot if it’s not working
  • Use storytelling/put a face to flu

FFF Campaigns for 2025/2026 Respiratory Season — flu, COVID, RSV, strep, etc.

  • Vaccinate Test Treat: Encourage vaccination, remind to test, both access and prevention messaging
  • Back to the Basics Campaign: Pro-science messaging, focus on disease burden
  • Influencer Campaign: New twist this year to focus on the middle population who may not vaccinate based on priorities; working with influencers talking about regular interests rather than lifestyle influencers

Comic Book: Kaden Blaze Fights Flu Bug
This comic book, which encourages elementary aged schoolchildren (and everyone who is eligible) to get vaccinated, is based on the true story of Kaden Stevenson who experienced a serious case of the flu with complications that led to amputation of both of his legs. FFF has been distributing the comic book and associated resources, also available for order through the FFF website, and welcomes collaboration to do that.

Coming Soon for FFF

  • National Influenza Vaccination Week (NIVW) — the first week in December
  • Strategic social media campaigning
  • A college-based challenge
  • Continuation of earned media

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Q: Is there a plan to get these comic books into physicians’ offices and community centers and places like that?
Eric Stein (FFF): Yes, we’ve been distributing them. It’s tough because the ordering page is not the most straightforward, but you can order the comic books online. We’ve been giving them out. If you reach out to us, we can have a conversation and send you some. We do a lot of state health department webinars, coalition webinars, things like that, where we promote it. And, if you order it from our website, from the QR code, reach out to us and we can send it out. We’ve been doing it that way as of right now. It just launched last week.
L.J Tan (Immunize, NAIIS): Let’s see if we can connect you [and Noah Louis-Ferdinand with VFV] with AAP and some of the other organizations in the Summit to let them know.

Q: Is the comic book in Spanish, too?
Eric Stein (FFF): We are working with NHMA on translating it into Spanish. The problem is we worked our graphic designers hard, and the speech bubbles are hard to change. It’s coming, but that might be a couple of months down the road. We do have some Spanish resources that are also in process that will be out sooner and have to do with the comic book, as well.
Q/Comment: Pediatricians’ offices are not likely to purchase the comic books, but maybe you can work with the vaccine companies and have them distribute them to their clinical liaisons, the medical science liaisons, or any sales representatives that pharmaceutical companies have.

Q: Are you sharing comic books with your local congressional officers from Michigan? This would be a great Michigan story.
Eric Stein (FFF): Yes, we did an email blast specifically to Michigan, to local people. We’ve been conquering and dividing, so I was not part of the direct Michigan release, but I have heard that there were people from Michigan. We were really trying to get Gretchen Whitmer; I heard that her office got hold of it, but I’m not sure. We’re working on it, and I appreciate the feedback.

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Vaccinate Your Family Fall Communications Plan

Dana Howe, MS, gave updates about their organization’s fall communications plans.

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Vaccinate Your Family Fall Communications Plan – Dana Howe, MS
Vaccinate Your Family (VYF) is going back to basics this season.

  • Focusing on clarifying recommendations and scientific evidence: Explaining specific studies and focusing on the highest risk groups to highlight evidence-based recommendations, from multiple sources, for flu, COVID-19, and RSV.
  • Reframing toward wellness: To attempt to de-polarize the conversation around vaccines, VYF is reframing vaccination as part of wellness for the entire family during respiratory disease season. They are centering regular people for influence, not just experts, and in a more personable style.
  • Communicating about access: Because access is varied based on geographical location and other factors right now, VYF is building in tools to help people navigate the landscape.

Winter Wellness Campaign — #RootedInProtection

  • Primary audience: Scrunchy Mom — a modern mainstream Millennial mom who balances wellness with convenience, listens to other moms and not just experts, may be swayed to natural health care solutions but is open to science-backed options.
  • The toolkit: Everything in the toolkit is in English and Spanish. The materials aim to address people who may be susceptible to messages that question the importance of vaccination and is creating messaging that includes simple, easy-to-understand, evidence-based information from high-powered studies to support vaccination.
  • Expanded work with content creators: These creators are helping to place key messages through direct posting from their own platforms that direct the audience to selected studies. VYF has also launched their own TikTok account.

Viral Truths
VYF is launching an initiative called Viral Truths, which will include a microsite and has already launched a weekly newsletter.

  • The Vaccine Intelligence Report: The newsletter provides fact-based, nonpartisan updates on vaccine policy, scientific research, and outbreak trends.
  • Microsite launching soon: The microsite will offer real-time information on vaccine safety, policy resources, and curated expert content to counter misinformation and support informed public policy.

VYF Calls-to-Action Resources

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Announcements
  • Save the date for the 2026 National Adult and Influenza Immunization Summit in-person meeting: May 19 – 21, 2026 at the Crowne Plaza Atlanta Perimeter at Ravinia in Atlanta, GA.
    • Recommendations for items for the agenda for this meeting are welcome, by email to NAIIS.

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