Successful Campus and Public Health Collaborations for Mass H1N1 Vaccination

Weeks before detection of H1N1 flu in the United States in early 2009, and while many campuses anxiously awaited its arrival, McNeese State University and the State of Louisiana Region V Department of Health and Hospitals Office of Public Health pushed ahead with development of a plan for rapid dispensing of vaccine to the campus community and for use of a campus-controlled facility as a regional stockpile site for receiving vaccine from the Strategic National Stockpile. A closed Point of Dispensing (POD) for the purpose of vaccinating up to ten-thousand University students, faculty, and staff within a compresses period of time was eventually activated through collaborative effort involving local, regional and state public health officials and campus personnel representing student health services, nursing faculty, student services, business affairs, physical plant, public information, and environmental health and safety. Upon activation this POD distributed approximately one-thousand, five-hundred nasal and injection doses of vaccine and immediately fed vaccination data into the state’s immunization tracking system known as LINKS (Louisiana Immunization Network for Kids Statewide). This presentation will discuss development of the collaborative relationship between University and public health officials, mitigation and preparedness activities in advance of H1N1 flu arriving in the region, and the University’s experience using the Incident Command System in planning, activating, and managing the POD. Lessons learned, public health as a focus of institutional disaster mitigation and preparedness, and recommendations for campuses considering similar collaborative activities with local public health and emergency preparedness interests will also be discussed