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Grants in Action
Colorado Immunization Information System
Preventing Serious Illness in Children
Pediatrician Dr. Steve Berman has witnessed firsthand the value of immunizations for children. “When I trained 30 years ago, I admitted children to the hospital every day with meningitis. Today, I rarely do. We’ve also been able to reduce diseases like influenza. People don’t realize that it’s children under age five who have the highest death rate from the flu.”
Berman knows a thing or two about children’s health care. He is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and The Children’s Hospital, where he is also chair of general pediatrics. Berman also knows that it is not prudent to assume that certain diseases are no longer a threat. “What we’ve learned from other countries like the United Kingdom, where measles and whooping cough have made a resurgence, is that there are reservoirs of these diseases in the world,” he says. “Colorado is only a plane ride away from these reservoirs.”
This knowledge is what keeps Berman working as an advocate for the Colorado Immunization Information System (CIIS). CIIS is an immunization registry that helps health care providers give timely immunizations by collecting and combining immunization records.
Colorado’s registry was created in 1996 through the University of Colorado School of Medicine with federal grant funds. After several years, the program became the immunization registry for the State of Colorado under a contract with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Elaine Lowery, who has degrees in law and public health, has been CIIS program manager since the start.
“We have worked very hard to get the input of the actual health care providers,” Lowery says. She describes how they analyzed the care processes in different health providers’ offices to see how to best integrate CIIS into their routines. “We ran into as many styles for delivery as there were offices!”
The web-based CIIS is now widely used by large health care providers and institutions across the state. One immediate focus for the future is on reaching more individual physicians and community partners like small health clinics by providing technology updates and training where needed. Another goal is to increase regular notifications to families whose children are not current with their vaccinations. Rose Community Foundation is supporting these efforts with a grant of $100,000.
CIIS did a survey of health providers and parents in December 2007, and the feedback was positive. Referring to a reminder letter, one parent said, “It was really nice to be notified by the clinic that my child was behind on immunizations. I had totally spaced it out!”
A physician in Delta County commented, “It just makes sense to use CIIS. Families move around, immunizations are cumbersome to keep track of using paper records, and anything that can improve immunization services is a good idea”
Now that CIIS has been in use for more than a decade, a longer-term goal is to figure out how the data in the system can be analyzed to be useful to the state’s policymakers. “The registry can be a very helpful planning tool,” says Berman.
Berman and Lowery already know that CIIS has made a difference in the state. “This system has shown its value to providers,” Lowery says. “And the more they use it, the more helpful it is.”
Read more about CIIS at coloradoimmunizations.info.
- From Impact, Rose Community Foundation's newsletter - Spring 2008
No Link between Immunizations and Autism
In 1998, a study was published that appeared to establish a link between the administration of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and the onset of autism in children. Since that time, more extensive studies have been performed that did not replicate the findings, and 10 of the original study’s 13 coauthors retracted their endorsement of the study’s conclusions. The Centers for Disease Control continues to recommend two doses of the MMR vaccine for all children.