PHO Webinar: Catch-Up of Routine & School Based Immunizations for School-Aged Children & Adolescents

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant challenges to the delivery of routine and recommended immunizations, including limited public health capacity to deliver school based immunization programs leaving many children and adolescents under-immunized, susceptible to vaccine preventable diseases and in need of catch-up vaccines. Catch-up immunization schedules are available to address missed and/or delayed vaccines, but can be challenging to apply in practice.

This session will provide an overview of key principles of immunization record assessment and catch-up for school-aged children and adolescents. Through the use of case studies, participants will gain familiarity with applying Ontario’s publicly funded immunization schedules (routine, school-based and catch-up programs) and extended eligibility guidance to common scenarios. An overview of strategies and successes for training new health unit staff will be provided.

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
1. Describe the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on routine immunizations’ delivery and coverage.
2. Identify and know where to access Ontario’s publicly funded immunization schedules (routine, school-based) and extended eligibility guidance.
3. Understand key immunization principles related to routine immunization scheduling and catch-up.
4. Apply key principles to common case studies that assess school-aged clients for recommended immunizations based on immunization history, timing and age.
5. Describe a training approach for new public health unit staff on the appropriate delivery of catch up vaccines based on an interpretation of a client’s immunization record.

Presenters: Dr. Nisha Thampi, Kelly Yu, Leslie Alderman, Harjit Chung

The presentation can be found here: https://www.publichealthontario.ca/en...