Publish date: 19 December 2023
Expanded immunisation team working to ensure young people don’t fall through gaps
New initiatives and targeted work in communities has helped a small NHS team vaccinate 74,000 children against flu this winter.
The service, run by Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, has also demonstrated successes in administering the HPV vaccine to young people, which is timely given last month’s national pledge to eliminate cervical cancer.
Earlier this year, the trust’s school-age immunisation service (SAIS) was commissioned to provide vaccinations to children and young people across an expanded area, covering Northumberland, North Tyneside, Newcastle and Gateshead.
That includes around 500 schools, but the team is clear that they provide a ‘school-age’ service, not just in schools. They have listened to feedback from families and now provide evening and weekend sessions.
This includes a vaccine hub at the Metrocentre and partnering with Active Northumberland to use leisure centres in the county. For the latest area to be covered by the service, the team has linked up with the Jewish Community Council of Gateshead to ensure it caters its offer for this community.
All the different work has added up to 74,000 flu vaccinations for schoolchildren, enough to fill St James’ Park and London’s O2 arena combined – all delivered by a team of 40 nurses, but just 18 whole-time equivalents.
The new contract did lead to an expansion of the team, with seven new posts, and that has included newly qualified nurses, as clinical leads Stephanie Gibbs and Caroline Smith are passionate about promoting nursing careers beyond the most well-known roles in hospitals.
Stephanie said: “In recent years, we have worked to create a team of public health nurses, rather than simply immunisation nurses.
“Each nurse is designated to a cohort of schools and they effectively take on three roles in their day-to-day work; as a bridge between education and health, a point of contact, and to develop an insight into the challenges faced in each community.
“This could be deprivation, low educational attainment, high ethnic minority populations or digital poverty to name but a few barriers to vaccination uptake.”
The SAIS is also responsible for the HPV vaccine, which is given to children aged 12 and 13 to protect against cervical and other types of cancer.
A recent event highlighted how one area covered by the team, Northumberland, bucked national trends in 2021/22 to achieve 91.5% coverage for HPV vaccination in Year 9 girls. NHS England has committed to pursue the elimination of cervical cancer by 2040.
Work to tackle barriers to vaccination uptake for HPV has been one of the key projects for the team.
Caroline explained: “An e-consent process allows access to real-time data on young people where consent has not been given. Further investigation can take place to see if this is caused by vaccine hesitancy, apathy or something else.
“We ran a pilot with a small group of schools in the most deprived areas of Newcastle where we sent text messages to reiterate the vaccine was free. The messages included a link to the consent form and information on HPV. This resulted in an additional 1,569 young people being vaccinated.
“When the HPV vaccination switched to one dose, we worked with colleagues to identify students about to leave Year 11 who were unvaccinated, and another text message campaign led to 81 more young people being vaccinated.
“While that is a relatively small number, we must remember that that is potentially 81 families who will not face the trauma of supporting their loved ones through cancer.”
Northumbria Healthcare’s SAIS has been used as a case study for the NHS England vaccination strategy, and Stephanie and Caroline have been invited to an event at Parliament in January 2024 for Cervical Cancer Prevention Week.
For more information, visit our immunisation service page.
Media contact
Ben O'Connell, external communications manager, Northumbria Healthcare
Benjamin.O'Connell@northumbria-healthcare.nhs.ukor