Monthly Update

August 2019 in Review

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In This Issue…

1. AIRA Sends Condolences to Vaccinate Your Family
2. Nominations Needed for Four AIRA Board Directors
   
3. Streamlined Agreement and Extended Funding Make No-Cost Address Cleansing & Geocoding Service Irresistible
   
4. #AIRA2019 National Meeting Recap
   
5. Measurement & Improvement Updates
6. Recent Information Requests Added to the AIRA Repository
7. Steering Committee Updates: August Recap

Check Out the AIRA Events Calendar for Upcoming…

• Don't – Miss Deadlines
• AIRA Events
• Webinars
• Committee Meetings
• AIRA Board of Directors Meetings
• Partner Events

AIRA Sends Condolences to Vaccinate Your Family

Richard (Rich) Greenaway, the Vaccinate Your Family Director of Operations sand Special Projects, passed away suddenly on August 11, 2019. Rich began his public health journey in the 1990s at the American Nurses Association (ANA) and became a project officer on a CDC-funded immunization grant for the ANA’s Foundation. In 2000, Rich accepted a position at Every Child By Two (ECBT) to oversee the fiscal and operational stability of the new nonprofit organization. He did his job with impeccable detail, while at the same time wearing dozens of hats that have led ECBT – now Vaccinate Your Family – to become one of the leading voices in immunization advocacy. Rich was also a founding member of ImmunizeDC, putting his nonprofit and vaccination expertise to use to help ensure the health of his own community. You can read more about Rich and his tireless commitment to public health here. Our thoughts are with Rich’s family and our Vaccinate Your Family colleagues during this time of loss.

Nominations Needed for Four AIRA Board Directors

Nominations are open for four AIRA board directors, and we need your help to fill the positions! Three of the positions are for a voting director; one is for a non-voting director.

Please review the criteria and submit your nominations no later than Thursday, September 5.

Per the new AIRA bylaws, the process for electing board officers has changed. In line with many other non-profit boards, officers are now elected by the AIRA board, drawing from sitting directors.

AIRA is pleased to announce that Dave McCormick from the Indiana State Department of Health was elected as the AIRA president-elect, and Dannette Dronenburg from the Washington State Department of Health was elected as the next secretary. A round of applause for both of them!

In mid-September, all AIRA voting members will be notified of the final slate of director candidates and given an opportunity to vote electronically. A meeting for non-electronic voters will be held on September 25. More information will be sent out closer to the meeting date. 

Streamlined Agreement and Extended Funding Make No-Cost Address Cleansing & Geocoding Service Irresistible

There has never been a better time to sign up for SmartyStreets, the shared address cleansing and geocoding service that is available to AIRA members at no charge!

AIRA just updated its Partner Agreement to accommodate jurisdictions that have strict policies about indemnification and liability terms. The Partner Agreement is the first step in getting access to the service. If you’ve reviewed the agreement before and had to reject it, or if you have yet to read it, it’s time to check it out!

In addition, AIRA and the CDC have extended their funding of the service through 2024. That means the service will be available to IIS programs at no charge until at least that time; we hope to continue funding the service after that, based on the value and economies of scale it offers the whole IIS community. Invest your resources in setting it up now — and your payoff will continue for years to come!

Along with geocoding, SmartyStreets offers address standardization and validation through manual batch processing, automated batch processing, an HL7 real-time solution, and/or a user interface API. The service became available to all AIRA member IIS programs as of June 1, 2017.

Are you interested in learning more from IIS who are using the service?Attend one of our User Group meetings! You don’t have to be enrolled to participate in the calls. The Address Cleansing User Group meets every other month on the second Wednesday. The next meeting is on October 9 from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. ET.

Hear how other jurisdictions are:

• Planning steps to implement the service
• Assessing their data quality
• Using cleansed and validated data to support their program needs
• Geocoding and creating maps

Plus, you can ask questions specific to your system.

Please contact Maureen Neary with all your questions about the SmartyStreets service and to join the User Group. 

#AIRA2019 National Meeting Recap 

There were so many great things that made this year's AIRA National Meeting our most successful to-date. AIRA would like to sincerely thank those who attended, presented, moderated, volunteered, and sponsored the meeting. We hope you will be able to join us next year for the AIRA 2020 National Meeting, August 11 – August 13, 2020 in Portland, Oregon!

AIRA 2019 Sponsored Awards

AIRA is community-driven and would not be the same without our stellar volunteers. We also love to showcase the incredible work being done by IIS! This year, the Louisiana Office of Public Health Immunization Program (LINKS) received the AIRA 2019 Centers of Excellence Award for its work to apply a fee structure to its current process for providing HEDIS data from LINKS.

AIRA also bestowed AIRA 2019 Volunteer Service Awards to four remarkable volunteers:

Jane Zucker, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Jane Zucker was nominated and selected for this award for her service as an AIRA volunteer in the IIS community. Over the years, Jane has served as a subject matter expert and strong advocate for IIS. She is always available to provide her perspective and long-standing knowledge on IIS and mentor others in the community. Under Jane’s leadership, New York City has set an example and led the way for immunization program use of IIS data.

Mary Woinarowicz, North Dakota Department of Health
Mary Woinarowicz was nominated and selected for this award for her service as an AIRA Volunteer in the IIS community. Over the years, Mary has served as a subject matter expert on many AIRA projects, ranging from in-person meetings, interviews, SME workgroups and committees to serving as a board member. She is always available to provide her perspective and long-standing knowledge on IIS.

Steve Hill was nominated and selected for this award for his service as an AIRA volunteer in the IIS community. Steve served as a subject matter expert for the AIRA Onboarding Project where he was able to share his expertise and knowledge while fully engaging in the project, and he shared the final product in a webinar introducing the guide to the community.

Danny Wise, Allscripts 
Danny Wise was nominated and selected for this award for his service as an AIRA volunteer in the IIS community. Danny has served on a number of AIRA special projects as a subject matter expert in regard to EHR implementation and provider workflows. He currently serves as one of the co-chairs of the HL7 Immunization User Group.

This year AIRA awarded two Lifetime Achievement Awards during the 20^th Anniversary Celebration. The two award recipients, Elaine Lowery and Warren Williams, have contributed countless hours, talents, knowledge, and wisdom to this community.

Elaine Lowery received a JD from Emory University and a Master’s in Public Health from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. Her work history includes working as the manager of the Colorado Immunization Registry for 12 years. She will be retiring from public health consulting this year.

Some of the contributions Elaine has made include:

• Serving as Co-chair of the Modeling of Immunization Registry Operations Workgroup
• She has partnered and consulted on multiple AIRA projects with the Network for Public Health Law, lending her legal prowess in the review of the SmartyStreets Partner Agreement, the Interjurisdictional Memorandum of Understanding
• She has presented on multiple AIRA Discovery Sessions, at AIRA meetings, and Education Events

Outside of AIRA, she also contributed to her local immunization community by serving as the co-chair of legislative policy for the Colorado Children’s Immunization Coalition

Warren Williams received his MPH from Emory University. He worked at the CDC from 1991 until October 2018, most recently as the former IIS Support Branch Chief. Before coming to the IIS world, he worked in maternal and child health and cancer registry programs. Warren was very involved in AIRA as MIROW co-chair, serving alongside Elaine, and as CDC representative on the Joint Development and Implementation Advisory Workgroup to name a few.

Measurement & Improvement Updates

Submission Town Hall – AIRA and the Measurement for Assessment and Certification Advisory Workgroup (MACAW) would like to thank all those who attended the Submission Assessment Town Hall on August 29 where we reviewed two new measures for Submission Assessment to include the use of NDCs. The recording and materials from the Town Hall can be found on the AIRA repository here. Below are the two new proposed measures for Submission Assessment. If you need additional documentation or have comments, please contact Kristi Siahaya. 

15)  The IIS processes an administered vaccine using the preferred NDC format.

• This will include Unit of Use and Unit of Sale test cases in the community preferred 11 digits with hyphens format

16)  The IIS processes an administered vaccine using alternative NDC formats.

• This will include Unit of Use and Unit of Sale test cases in known (and standard) alternative NDC formats (i.e., 10 digits w/ hyphens; 11 digits w/o hyphens)

Comments are being requested through Friday, September 6.

More information about the Measurement and Improvement (M&I) Initiative can be found here. 

Please contact Kristi Siahaya if you have questions.

Recent Information Requests Added to the AIRA Repository

The recent Information Request regarding combinations of CVX and Reaction Code can be found by using the “Information Requests” filter in AIRA repository. Information Requests are viewable only by individual members and individuals affiliated with member and partner organizations. Just log in to view these valuable resources! If you have any questions, please email membership coordinator Amanda Branham.

Steering Committee Updates: August Recap