We are all supporters of having our primary care offices serve as the principal medical home for our patients, and thanks to technology, health events that happen to our patients away from their medical home can still be reported to that home. Such is the case with vaccinations administered in schools rather than offices. But one wondersif vaccines given in school leads to better or worse vaccination rates.
To answer that question, Szilagyi et al. (10.1542/peds.2016-1746) performed a cluster randomized clinical trial of 44 randomized elementary schools in upstate New York to either give a school-located influenza vaccine or get their flu shots outside of school as they normally would (or would not).
Schools given the flu vaccine also sent information and consent forms home with students and one-time vaccine clinics were then held at the intervention schools. While children at intervention schools were still eligible to get their flu shots from their primary care doctor, they could also get vaccinated at school. What is nice is that whether the school was in a suburban or urban setting, having a school located influenza vaccine clinic did raise vaccine rates and what is even nicer—is that when schools advertised the benefits of this program, there was little difficulty getting parents to sign online consent.
Compare this last statement to the difficulties we can encounter with vaccine hesitant families in our practices. Thus—this study is a great example of why we might be even stronger advocates for partnering with our community schools to promote vaccination in that setting. The fall season is not just a great time for students to go back to school but for recommended vaccinations to do the same!