Strengthening Vaccine-Preventable Disease Prevention and Response - The US Virgin Islands Immunization program is one of 64 jurisdictions across the United States charged with administering the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Vaccines for Children’s program across all districts in the territory, St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix, and has been fiscally supported through federal cooperative agreements since the inception of the Vaccine for Children Program in 1994. The program comprises a staff of 11 that also administers supporting components including immunization quality improvement for providers (IQIP), Hepatitis B case management and vaccine surveillance, adolescent vaccination, and adult vaccination and pandemic response. The program also manages the Immunization Registry System (VIIRS), a cloud-based vaccination data registry established in 2020 with emphasis on data quality, data management, interoperability with jurisdictional healthcare provider electronic health systems, and some national and government eHR’s, consumer access, vaccine ordering, and federal reporting of jurisdictional vaccine administration. The program spearheaded the jurisdictional response to the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-2022) ensuring the availability of Pfizer, Moderna, and Jansen vaccines for the community at large. The intent of this five-year cooperative agreement is to support the furtherance of the overall efforts of the Vaccine for Children program and the subsequent components with focus on pockets of the community that are marginalized aside from the uninsured and underinsured, but who are vaccine hesitant. A significant outcome involves the establishment of qualitative and quantitative data the program can use to identify communities, populations, or geographic areas with low vaccination coverage or at high risk for VPD outbreaks, and focusing on disparities or inequitable access.
