Champions for School Health—An NASN Initiative to Increase Vaccine Confidence, Equity, and Uptake in COVID-19 and School-Required Vaccinations: Part 2

• Published in: NASN school nurse 2023-11, Vol.38 (6), p.301-309
• Main Authors: D’Souza-Vazirani, Deborah, Behrmann, Erin, Alvarez, Cindy, Walsh, Carol, Griffin, A. Renee, White, Stephanye
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1942-602X; 1942-6038
• DOI: 10.1177/1942602X231202745

NASN, with generous funding from Kaiser Permanente (KP) and partnered with the Institute for Educational Leadership, developed and implemented the Champions for School Health (CSH) grant initiative. The CSH initiative awarded 54 Implementation Grants in two funding cycles in 2022, funding school districts and community-based organizations (CBOs) to increase access to the pediatric COVID-19 vaccine as well as school-required immunizations and to increase vaccine confidence among underserved populations in KP’s footprint: California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Oregon, Virginia, Washington, and the District of Columbia. These grantees administered a total of 17,630 COVID-19 vaccines to individuals ages 5 or older and 34,025 routine immunizations, of which 8,233 school-required vaccinations went to children of ages 5–11 years. Over 851,000 people were reached by vaccine education events in all nine KP markets. A notable takeaway from the project’s results was the new partnerships created and the continuation of existing partnerships by the grantees. NASN’s implementation of the CSH initiative and results provides a model and a source of critical data on how school health services and community-based organizations can partner to provide hyper-local responses to community/public health crises. This Part 2 article provides an overview of the key results of the project.