A draft working-group report from the 6th LifeCourse Immunization Summit. Structured as paired observations, challenges, and proposed strategies, it examines what makes vaccination programs succeed across the life course — from digitizing registries and training all healthcare professionals to reaching older adults, pregnant women, and adolescents — and distills the cross-cutting lessons learned from the COVID-19 response.
Draft Report
Observations · Challenges · Strategies
6th LifeCourse Immunisation Summit, 2021–2022
Excellence in Pediatrics Institute × Vaccines Together
Topic 01
The main elements of a successful vaccination programme centre on working closely with civil society, increasing information and digitalization, and improving communication and access to services for target populations — in terms of both affordability and physical proximity.
For many years, healthcare systems failed to digitize vaccination registries, schedules, appointments and reminders for adult vaccination in the way that has now been done for COVID. This has limited our ability to know exact coverage within communities and target populations, making targeted policies and campaigns hard to implement.
Educating all healthcare professionals on infectious disease prevention, new vaccine technology, safety and delivery gives them the confidence to engage and advocate for vaccines.
Infectious disease prevention and vaccination are not currently treated as overarching topics in which every healthcare professional must be involved and trained throughout their careers.
The COVID experience has shown that coordinated collaboration between all healthcare professionals — physicians, pharmacists and nurses — is crucial to implementing vaccination policies.
Community pharmacists and nurses do not currently have the tools they need; healthcare workers should check vaccination status at each interaction and make a collective effort to advise.
Community pharmacists and nurses must be integral to reaching and delivering vaccinations to older people. Working within communities, with the help of healthcare professionals the communities already trust, could be a game-changer.
Medical specialists not involved in infectious diseases, along with pharmacists and nurses, are not trained in infectious disease prevention, vaccine safety and vaccine technology, resulting in a reluctance to actively promote and implement vaccination policies.
A cross-country, representative expert group examining how the systems created during COVID can be used for future LifeCourse vaccination strategies, and setting priorities for targeted intervention.
A campaign targeted at policymakers and medical bodies to increase essential vaccine training and to provide training updates within national training programmes for all HCPs, regardless of specialty.
An online training programme to increase knowledge of vaccine technology among healthcare professionals across all specialties, nurses and pharmacists, offering a deeper understanding of the various technologies and the safety data.
An online awareness campaign, resource centre and free webinars and training, conveying a message of advocating vaccines in every consultation.
Cross-Cutting Themes
Ease of access is paramount to implementing vaccination successfully at large scale — ideally, all vaccinations should be given in the same place.
Pharmacists are integral to successfully delivering vaccinations at large scale.
Addressing health inequalities in access to information and care is important to increasing vaccination coverage.
Vaccine reimbursement is crucial in persuading people to get vaccinated, removing a significant barrier.
Employers' engagement in vaccination is important to increasing coverage.
Integration of vaccination status with primary care and occupational medicine could become a standard of health maintenance.
Targeted strategies, such as prioritizing the most at-risk populations, can succeed when sufficiently explained and communicated.
Previously existing excluded groups for vaccination remain difficult to reach, even during the pandemic.
