Vaccination rates rise when schools have in-school clinics combined with parent reminders and education compared to schools with parent education only, according to Peter G. Szilagyi, University of California Los Angeles, and his colleagues who have studied school-located influenza vaccination (SLIV) for the past few years.

“Through several randomized controlled trials of SLIV in elementary and middle/high schools, we have demonstrated that SLIV can raise overall influenza vaccination rates by 3-16 percentage points among schoolchildren and complements rather substitutes for practice-based vaccination,” Szilagyi and his colleagues wrote in the Journal of School Health.

This study set out to compare the combination of parent reminders and education about vaccination and SLIV. Approximately 36 schools with 24,832 students within Monroe County, New York participated during the 2016-2017 influenza-vaccination season. The schools were assigned to three groups: control (9 schools, N = 8,009 students), reminder/education-only (12 schools, N = 6,669), and reminder/education and SLIV (15 schools, N = 10,154). 

The reminders included three rounds of notifications to all parents about the importance of flu vaccination. It included links to videos by the CDC and infographics about influenza as well as the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. In schools with SLIV, the reminders included information about the clinic and information to sign up. For those who did, additional reminders were sent three weeks, one week, and one day before the scheduled SLIV. There was only one SLIV scheduled between November 28 and December 2, 2016.

Approximately 673 children in the reminder/education and SLIV group (6.6% of the school population) received an influenza vaccination via the in-school clinic. Vaccination rates for the control group were 51.3%, reminder/education group 41.2% (p < .001), and reminder/education and SLIV group 58.7% (p<.001). Compared to the prior vaccination season, vaccination rates within the control group and reminder/education and SLIV group remained the same while the rates within the reminder/education group dropped from 44.7% to 41.2% (p<.001). 

There was a significant increase in the vaccination rates of the reminder/education and SLIV group compared to the control group. Children in the former group had higher odds of receiving a vaccination compared to children in the control group (OR 1.27, 95% CI 1.10-1.47).

Szilagyi and his colleagues recommend that if schools want to increase vaccination rates, they “work with the local health department or another mass vaccinator organization who would actually administer the SLIV clinics and vaccinations.”