Children’s Mercy Kansas City received a 1-year, $50,000 GlaxoSmithKline Center for Medical Education Vaccine Preventable Diseases grant, which will be used to update and expand the vaccine education program started at Children's Mercy.
This award is part of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society’s (PIDS’s) “Comprehensive Vaccine Education from Training to Practice” program, which includes the Collaboration for Vaccine Education and Research (CoVER) vaccine modules and The Vaccine Handbook App. Sharon Humiston, MD, MPH, Urgent Care, who previously worked for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases training and education branch, is the Principal Investigator. Children's Mercy faculty collaborators include Dr. Kadriye Lewis and Shannon Clark.
“It is essential for physicians and nurses along the spectrum of professional development and in every specialty to understand the tremendously important role vaccines have in preventing diseases that can cause disability and death. If we forget history – letting misinformation and a strident fear of vaccination rule the day – we will relive some of history’s tragic moments,” wrote Dr. Humiston. “Without training, healthcare providers are just as susceptible to erroneous ways of thinking about vaccines as laypersons. With training, we become vaccine champions, vital to our patients and to our communities.”
The goal of this ‘Comprehensive Vaccine Education’ program is 1) to introduce learners to immunizations, primarily through CoVER, which is comprised of attractive and interactive online modules that utilize best practices in adult education, and 2) to answer the questions that arise as clinicians move into the practice years, using The Vaccine Handbook App (TVH App). The updated edition of TVH App (by Gary Marshall, MD, professor of pediatrics at the University of Louisville School of Medicine) is now free of charge, available in iOS and Android, and indexed for quick reference.
“There are few medical advances that have had as large and as positive an effect on humanity as immunization. We invite trainees to get excited about the many facets of these powerful marvels: the clinical aspects are undeniably important, the research questions seem endless, and the opportunities for quality improvement are legion. Even if all you want is something to argue about over Thanksgiving dinner, how can you NOT want to know about vaccines?” said Dr. Humiston.
The PIDS ‘Comprehensive Vaccine Education’ program is funded by every U.S. vaccine manufacturer: GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Pasteur, Merck, Pfizer, Seqirus, and Valneva.