BACKGROUND. Despite enhanced coverage through Medicaid and the VFC Program, low-income children, adolescents, adults, and pregnant people continue to have lower estimated vaccination rates than those above poverty level. While this disparity is influenced by many factors, interagency and multi-stakeholder collaboration with Medicaid programs can strengthen their ability to understand and address barriers to improving immunization rates among these vulnerable populations, including immunization information systems interoperability, provider scope of practice, enhanced communications efforts, among others.
PURPOSE & APPROACH. AcademyHealth and NASHP, in potential partnership with AIM and AIRA, propose forming a new “Vaccine Information Sharing and Education Resource” Network (VISER Network). We will build on our previously CDC-funded project with two new proposed workstreams. This proposal aims to engage with Vaccine Access Cooperative (VAC) members, the Medicaid Medical Directors Network (MMDN), and other Medicaid stakeholders using a multi-faceted strategy to collaboratively improve immunization rates for all Medicaid covered lives.
The VISER Learning Network: Building on momentum and partnerships generated through previous regional VAC meetings, the VISER Learning Network will engage cross-agency and multi-sector VAC participants in an ongoing learning network focused on disseminating evidence-based information, sharing promising and best practices to improve vaccination rates, and discussing emerging issues related to vaccine-preventable respiratory conditions. Leveraging this new coalition of partners, the VISER Learning Network will hold monthly calls to present timely information and share strategies to improve immunization rates for vaccine-preventable respiratory conditions.
Technical Assistance (TA) to Address Barriers to Information Exchange and Collaboration Between Medicaid Programs and Public Health: In-depth Policy Consultations: The project team will focus on addressing policy, technical, and organizational barriers to information exchange between state Medicaid information systems and IIS. Improving bi-directional information exchange between Medicaid and immunization programs is critical to understanding and addressing vaccination coverage and gaps and supporting IIS infrastructure through federal matching funds. The VISER Network will launch an opportunity for up to six cross-agency state teams (two cycles of three states each) to receive in-depth TA on specific goals related to connecting IIS and Medicaid programs to share immunization data between agencies and support IIS infrastructure.
