Search:

A summary of presentations from the weekly Summit partner webinars

December 11, 2025 – The latest Summit Summary

Resources for Public-Facing Communications and Challenges – Dana Howe, MS, Communication Director, Vaccinate Your Family

Dana Howe, MS, gave an update about resources available from Vaccinate Your Family.

VIEW SLIDES

Communicating in Today’s Vaccine Information Environment – Dana Howe, MS
The vaccine policy and communications landscape is changing fast.

Kaiser Family Foundation
Tracking Key HHS Public Health Policy Actions Under the Trump Administration

  • This tool keeps track of key changes and health policy actions that have been taken during Trump’s second term.

How can I keep myself up to speed on all that’s going on?
Resources for staying up to speed on the vaccine landscape, include but are not limited to:

What should we be sharing when?
At Vaccinate Your Family, per calendar year, there are two streams of information going at the same time.

  1. What VYF would like to be communicating about, in the absence of other current issues, and at a somewhat predictable cadence — for example:
    • HPV awareness
    • Season respiratory diseases
    • Infant and maternal immunization
    • Routine childhood vaccines
  2. What needs to be addressed, due to hot topics, policy and recommendations changes, and misleading information, at a more unpredictable cadence.

Where and who can we get timely communication information from?
Based on analysis of the terms of reference for the new working group at ACIP set up to look at childhood immunization, VYF predicted what some of the new issues would be (e.g., aluminum, the Danish immunization schedule) and began publishing information to address them.

Resources for Organized Responses

VYF’s Ready-to-Go Resources
VYF works to organize plug-and-play resources — such as toolkits, shareables, graphics, videos — from a variety of organizations into a compilation accessible through VaxCollab.org. This work takes on added importance as the CDC produces fewer toolkits while local health departments, for example, are still looking for these types of resources. VYF welcomes organizations to submit their materials for inclusion.

  • There is a monthly meeting at VaxCollab.org: Visit the website and Click “Join Us” to get an account.

What influencers/digital content creators are trusted sources?
There has been increased interest in lists of trusted influencers and content creators. AAP has published a list of pediatrician influencers, who they have vetted: https://www.healthychildren.org/English/family-life/Media/Pages/follow-pediatricians-for-trustworthy-content-on-childrens-health.aspx. VYF does not currently publish a list, largely due to the work involved with vetting, but they hope to move more into this area in 2026 and beyond.

 

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Q: I think AAP has been keeping general practitioners informed, because many of them don’t have the time, the bandwidth, to understand how much ACIP has gone off script regarding science-based processes. Do you have any favorite communication tips to remind people of where we are and where we should be in following science-based processes?
Dana Howe (VYF): A lot of people who traditionally have not been challenged to be a vaccine communicator, now are. That is challenging, [and you], in your personal life, may be suddenly challenged to be a one-on-one vaccine communicator, even if you’re not, say, running a social media account, you might have friends and family…or if you’re a clinician who doesn’t typically talk about vaccines with patients, now suddenly [you might get] questions and want to talk about them. [Speaking for myself], from what I’ve heard from a lot of the post-ACIP discussions this week, I think this ACIP meeting — certainly at the last [ACIP meeting] there were a lot of concerns raised about what evidence was, and was not, being used to inform the decisions made — but I think this past ACIP meeting didn’t leave any room for debate about this being ‘RFK is ACIP,’ and we are not seeing standards of evidence used to make evidence-based decisions.

I’m really starting to see people boldly communicate about a “before and after,” and say, “Historically, before ACIP was reconstituted, before this past summer, we could trust ACIP in these ways and sort of explain the work that they do and how we can rely on those evidence-based recommendations.” And now that has changed and, rather than spending time trying to communicate about the nuances of what is ultimately just a really complicated recommendation (using the hepatitis B recommendation that did come out of last week’s ACIP meeting), I think that we don’t want to use too much time trying to explain what is an ultimately complicated-on-purpose recommendation. Rather [we want to] explain at a little bit higher level about how this is complicated-on-purpose, and it’s not based on evidence, and that we need to start looking to other sources to help guide best practices — and just explain this isn’t based on any new safety information. The AAP continues to recommend universal birth dose for hepatitis B, and, rather than explaining about antibody titers and hepatitis B positive and hepatitis B negative mothers, and vertical transmission versus how else you can get hepatitis B (which I think is important, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t do that), but I think we can’t start there, because it validates this recommendation that’s not based on evidence. So, we’re all challenged to start figuring out how to just say that: There is unfortunately a before and after, and this body has lost credibility, because we’re not seeing them follow the science.

Q/Comment: Having plug-and-play summaries of ACIP meetings would be helpful, different versions for newsletters, board meetings, member meetings, etc.
Dana Howe (VYF): Well, the best one I’ve seen is the IZ Express post-ACIP, everything you possibly need to know, so I’ll shout that out again. Certainly, we then try to summarize that and put it in maybe shorter pared-down terms for different audiences, but I’ll plug that resource for post-ACIP. And increasingly, I think that organizations are issuing statements after ACIP — I think we have, I know others have as well — where we are just trying to say, “Here’s what we saw, here’s why we were concerned,” to, if nothing else, provide that language so that it’s out there and there can be a record that this isn’t business as usual, and [we’re] just continuing to kind of raise those flags when we see them.

BACK TO TOP

Announcements
  • Laurel Wood, longtime IZ Express writer, among other valuable roles, is retiring. Immunize thanked her for her work and invited people who know her to drop her a note of congratulations.
  • 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.
    • The meeting page (https://www.izsummitpartners.org/2026-naiis/) will open for registration in early 2026.
    • Recommendations for items for the agenda for this meeting are welcome, by email to NAIIS.
    • Nominations for the Immunization Champion Awards (the Immunization Neighborhood Champion and the Laura Scott Flu Award) are welcome, and there will be a scientific poster session that will be open to submissions.

BACK TO TOP

Search: