Monthly Update

February 2021 in Review

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In This Issue…

1. AIRA's COVID-19 Response Update
2. February and March ACIP Meetings
3. How SmartyStreets Can Support Patient Matching Efforts
4. Measurement and Improvement Updates
5. AIRA Board Corner: Dannette Dronenburg, Secretary
6. AIRA 2020 Education Survey Reminder
7. Wanted: SnapShots Contributors
8. Information Requests
9. Committee and Workgroup Updates: February Recap
10. AIRA Job Opportunities
11. In the News - February 2021

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's COVID-19 Response Update

Greetings,

February was a short month with a lot going on. Over the last month, you have all undoubtedly continued to adapt and grow your COVID-19 vaccination response while working on planning to sustain pandemic as well as routine vaccination efforts using your IIS.

AIRA worked to support our members in a variety of ways. We hosted two webinars to help jurisdictions strategize what to include in supplemental funding workplans and developed a complementary resource, Potential COVID-19 Vaccination Supplemental Funding Activities, that outlined activities to support the pandemic response as well as long-term system sustainability. We also hosted two Member Meet-up Sessions as informal opportunities for jurisdictions to discuss challenges and solutions among each other with topics including data quality, training staff and new IIS users, and provider prioritization for onboarding. Our February Discovery Session focused on mindfulness, not our typical sort of topic but an important one we could all dedicate some attention to during these stressful times.

We know extensive immunization legislation is being introduced across many states, in some cases to strengthen IIS policies and to weaken them in other instances. As we explore the development of resources we think could be beneficial, such as cost estimates and best practices, I encourage you to reach out to AIRA with ways we can support you as legislation challenges arise in your jurisdiction. You may find our IIS Policies to Support Pandemic and Routine Vaccination one-sheet useful in the meantime. On a national level, as we shared in January, the Immunization Infrastructure Modernization Act of 2021 was introduced in the US House of Representatives and is expected to be introduced in the Senate soon. AIRA developed talking points that summarize the components of the bill and how it impacts the IIS community.

As COVID-19 vaccination data continue to be in the spotlight, we collaborated with the Association of Immunization Managers to develop talking points to assist discussions with diverse stakeholders about data quality issues which we know many members are experiencing given the complexities of the vaccination data flow. All AIRA teams are working in various ways to support COVID-19 vaccination reporting and infrastructure enhancements, as well as routine immunization efforts. Read on for more of these updates.

As I speak directly with our members and partners, I continue to be inspired by the commitment and work you are all taking on. Thank you for all the hard work you continue to do.

Rebecca Coyle, MSEd
Executive Director

February and March ACIP Meetings

In February, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) had two sets of meetings: one to discuss non-COVID-19 vaccines and one to discuss the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine.

February 24 and 25 meetings

During the meetings on February 24 and 25, ACIP members received updates and discussed several vaccines, including rabies, dengue, tick-borne encephalitis, Ebola, hepatitis, pneumococcal, zoster, influenza, cholera, and orthopoxviruses. Committee members voted to adjust the vaccine schedule for rabies pre-exposure prophylaxis. The Clinical Decision Support for Immunization (CDSi) rules will be updated once the recommendations are published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

February 28 and March 1 meetings

On February 28, ACIP met to discuss and vote on recommendations for the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine. Committee members received an update on the safety and efficacy data for the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine. The members then used the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach to develop recommendations. Committee members voted to advise that “[t]he Janssen COVID-19 vaccine is recommended for persons 18 years of age and older in the US population under the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization.” The recommendation should be implemented in the context of current CDC allocation recommendations.

On March 1, ACIP met to discuss several topics related to COVID-19 vaccines, including implementation and clinical considerations, vaccine safety, and emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. No vote was taken on March 1.

How SmartyStreets Can Support Patient Matching Efforts

As a data quality intervention, SmartyStreets can improve the accuracy and completeness of both existing and incoming data within IIS. SmartyStreets standardizes addresses in conformance with the United States Postal Service (USPS) specifications. After standardization, SmartyStreets then validates the submitted address against the USPS database to determine if the address is a valid, deliverable address.

The SmartyStreets service may improve patient-level deduplication by eliminating variability in addresses within the IIS. Jurisdictions can use a variety of methods for resolving potential duplicative patient records, including systematic deduplication or manual deduplication by staff. Some jurisdictions that use SmartyStreets have created a matching algorithm to evaluate the returned address information from SmartyStreets against existing address information. A matching algorithm may allow the IIS to automatically merge duplicate patient records. Whether deduplication occurs systematically or manually, the cleansed addresses returned by SmartyStreets can help IIS improve patient matching rates. Improved patient-level deduplication may result in better reconciliation of the IIS patient denominator.

Want to learn more about SmartyStreets or how SmartyStreets can help with your patient matching efforts? The SmartyStreets User Group meets quarterly. Implementers and users collaborate on initial set up, troubleshoot issues, and share uses and successes. The user group encourages peer-to-peer relationships among the jurisdictions and platforms that use SmartyStreets. AIRA also offers a one-hour one-on-one SmartyStreets orientation session that gives an overview of the service. Both the user group and the orientation session are great forums to ask questions about SmartyStreets and how it can support your IIS data quality.

For more information on SmartyStreets or the SmartyStreets User Group, or to request a SmartyStreets orientation, please contact Tesha Lucas.

Measurement and Improvement Updates

2021 validation begins for all content areas

Just a reminder that AIRA staff are running tests and compiling results for Assessment and Validation reports for all content areas. Transport, Submission and Acknowledgement, Query and Response, and Clinical Decision Support 2021 validation results will be available in the Aggregate Analysis Reporting Tool (AART) over the course of the first quarter. All IIS that achieve validation will get 2021 Validation Certificates in April.

Clinical Decision Support (CDS) threshold updates

As of January 2021, we have updated the CDS Assessment threshold for deviates from 65% to 80%. Below are the current thresholds:

• Meets: 90 to 100%
• Deviates: 80 to 89%
• Does not meet: less than 80%

In 2019 when CDS Assessment first began, the Measurement for Assessment & Certification Advisory Workgroup acknowledged the challenges and complexities with implementing logic to pass Clinical Decision Support for Immunization (CDSi) test cases. As planned, CDS Assessment began with lower thresholds, and IIS have rapidly increased alignment with CDSi test cases over the last two years.

Have questions or need help? AIRA’s technical assistance team is ready to help you understand your AART dashboard and results, prioritize work, and support your movement toward better standards alignment. Don’t hesitate to contact us for technical assistance. We can quickly answer a question or dive deeper into topics, such as helping you and your IIS technical development team better understand issues and make plans to more fully align with standards. Fill out a Technical Assistance Request or contact Kristi Siahaya for more information.

AIRA Board Corner: Dannette Dronenburg, Secretary

Name: Dannette Dronenburg

Title: Provider Support & Vaccine Ordering Management System (VOMS) Supervisor

What do I do: I lead a team of five Provider Support Specialists who work with over 1,000 enrolled Childhood Vaccine Providers in Washington state (universal Vaccines For Children program). My team processes vaccine orders, reviews and tracks accountability reports and temperature logs, and manages yearly agreement renewals. I also manage the communication to our enrolled providers and lead our VOMS work with the IIS.

Organization’s name: Washington State Department of Health

Role on the AIRA board: Secretary

What do you like most about being on the AIRA board? I like being part of the larger national IIS community and learning how other jurisdictions operate.

What excites you most about the IIS community? There is never a dull moment. There are always new things happening, which is challenging and exciting all at the same time.

How does your involvement on the AIRA board bring value to your program? I think it helps Washington stay on the forefront of what is happening in the immunization and IIS community.

What is your favorite recent movie, book, or podcast and why? I just finished Angela’s Ashes, a memoir of a family living in poverty in Ireland during the Great Depression and the tragedy and struggles they faced. Now I’m reading ‘Tis by the same author. It’s about his challenges fitting in as a young man born in the US but raised in Ireland. I have Irish and Scottish roots, and this book was recommended by my brother who loves digging into our family history as much as I do.

What song would you play to get pumped up? My kids and I love to blast music while cleaning up after dinner and while running. We have quite an eclectic playlist, but probably one that pumps us all up is “Shut Up and Dance” by Walk the Moon.

What’s your favorite vacation spot? Ummm, all of them!! I am dreaming of England and Scotland, which is where we were supposed to go last spring break. We haven’t made it yet, but one day we will!

If you had a time machine, what time period would you visit and why? I think the 1800s. I’m a history nerd and am fascinated by how people lived back then. There was quite a bit of change during that period with technology and science. The medical practices were fascinating, if not slightly terrifying, too!

AIRA 2020 Education Survey Reminder

The AIRA 2020 Education Survey is open! AIRA's education efforts rely on the valuable input we get from our partners in the IIS community every year via this survey. We use your feedback to shape our educational activities for the next year. We know you're busy with COVID-19 vaccine rollout, and we appreciate any time you can lend to taking the survey. Please share the survey with other staff in IIS, immunization, or programmatic roles. We are leaving the survey open beyond the original January 31, 2021, deadline so you can take the survey anytime.

Wanted: SnapShots Contributors

SnapShots is AIRA’s newsletter about the progress, best practices, and accomplishments of IIS across the country. The newsletter comes out quarterly in March, June, September, and December. We’re always looking for contributors to submit articles for the newsletter and are also interested in finding people to write regular columns. Requests for articles are sent via AIRA’s email distribution list a couple months in advance of the newsletter being published, but you can send article ideas to us anytime. If you want to submit an article or are interested in writing a regular column, contact SnapShots editor Katie Reed.

Information Requests

AIRA members can submit and review information requests—a circulation of questions to and answers from the community. Check out the recently published Information Request regarding capturing race and ethnicity data 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 [email protected].

Committee and Workgroup Updates: February Recap