Boostrix announcements
Catch up on news and announcements regarding the Boostrix vaccine. Latest news will be featured on the Vaccine Clinic Hub homepage.
May 2023
Pertussis and MMR coming to Book My Vaccine – 18 May 2023
MMR and Tdap appointments will be available via Book My Vaccine (BMV) from June to support greater vaccination uptake for pregnant people and adults. This will allow people to:
- Find a vaccination appointment for a vaccine (flu, COVID-19, MMR, Tdap (dep on age))
- access eligibility advice
- book an appointment for an individual, on behalf of others, or as part of a group appointment.
You will receive more information in the next few weeks. For all Book My Vaccine updates, please refer to Te Whatu Ora - Book My Vaccine website
New childhood immunisation resources – 10 May 2023
By Māori for Māori
In collaboration with Te Aka Whai Ora, new Māori specific childhood immunisation resources promoting the benefits of immunisation are now available on Dropbox - Childhood immunisation - Simplify your life.
There are three videos that you are encouraged to share widely:
- The first video is with Dr Rawiri McKree Jansen who takes the sting out of immunisation by explaining how they keep us safe. He also provides the ingoa Māori for immunisation which is ‘he rongoā ārai mate’ which translates to a medicine that prevents illness.
- The second video provides some new kupu for immunisations like polio, rotavirus and measles.
- The third video is reo rua and a kōhanga reo whānau explaining the importance of looking after tamariki and mokopuna and why they chose to get their pepi immunised.
Four social media tiles are also available in poster print format and digital screen displays to promote immunisation. Each poster has a different message, including: Get your immunisations up to date, Keeping your mokopuna safe and Protecting our tamariki for life.
Posters can also be ordered via Bluestar.
By Pacific for Pacific
In partnership with Pacific Public Health, Pacific-specific childhood immunisation resources have been developed to engage Pacific parents and families, to help prioritise immunisations for their children. The resources include two short videos and posters of Pacific parents prioritising their children’s immunisations while balancing their family responsibilities. An additional poster has been developed with professional rugby player, Dhys Faleafaga, with her twin boys.
The videos, posters and social tiles are available on Dropbox and the posters can be printed and ordered via Bluestar portal.
Posters will be available in the Bluestar portal and can be ordered. Once on the portal, orders will go on backorder until the stock is printed.
Ordering Boostrix with DHL (Pharmacies only) – 10 May 2023
Earlier this year, DHL applied for and were granted a Wholesale & Repack license to cover all approved medicines from Medsafe.
Last week seeding stock of Boostrix was moved to DHL for the first time.
Their quality team have reviewed the product and all internal work instructions have been updated ready for distribution to commence.
You can now order Boostrix for Monday delivery and on the same order as Covid vaccines and/or consumables.
April 2023
Second checker course now live via the IMAC Learning Portal – 24 April 2023
The Second-Checker course is now available via the IMAC website and registration is free.
- The course is approximately 2 hours long, completed online, includes an assessment, and on completion generates a certificate.
- Access is via IMAC’s new LMS – Second Checker Course (LINK)
Who it is for
This course is designed for non-registered team members such as kaiāwhina, health care assistants, administration staff, pharmacy technicians and assistants to enable them to complete independent specific checks of the vaccine preparation process in settings where there may be limited clinical staff onsite.
The primary aim
The primary aim of the Second Checker role is to reduce the risk of vaccine errors. The authorised vaccinator (a registered health professional) has overall responsibility for checking vaccines before administration to a consumer, however, a team member that completes the Second Checker course can work alongside the registered vaccinator to support accuracy.
Free access to all healthcare professionals
This is an amazing resource for non-clinical staff to get involved in the vaccinating space, and support clinical staff.
However, we encourage authorised vaccinators, and other clinicians to also complete this free course to understand the content, and what this course enables a second checker to do. It is a good refresher for us all.
Childhood Immunisation Campaign – 18 April 2023
From mid-April, the National Immunisation Programme will be running an advertising campaign across the motu, promoting childhood immunisations. The campaign is led with two different TV adverts, updating last years “Acts of Aroha” creative with charming scenes of parents and caregivers protecting their tamaraki.
The objectives of the marketing communications for Childhood Immunisation are to:
- Ensure parents and caregivers prioritise immunising their tamariki
- Are aware that immunising their child is the most effective way to protect them from serious diseases
- Understand that their child needs certain immunisations at specific times throughout their life
- Reassure them that if any recommended vaccinations are missed, they can catch up
A suite of communications activities intended to prioritise whānau who have fallen behind their scheduled vaccinations has been developed.
Appearing on mainstream free-to-air channels, Sky TV, and Māori television, as well as TVNZ+ and ThreeNOW, the TV media will run until 4th June. TV will be supported by targeted YouTube and online video placements, as well as screens in medical centres, partner packs, collateral updates, and immunise.health.nz.
Tik Tok video promotion
NIP recently collaborated with a Pacific social media influencer to help promote childhood immunisations messages.
Dhys Faleafaga is a former Black Ferns sevens player, now playing for the Chiefs and has over 250k Tik Tok followers. Dhys, together with her partner Tone Ng Shiu (current All Blacks sevens player), developed a Tik Tok video with their twin babies with the prioritise to immunise message. After one week, the Tik Tok video had over 180k views and over 25k likes. You can watch it here.
www.immunise.health.nz
Website was launched mid-March 2023 that provides a hub for parents with all the information they need to make the best decision to get tamariki immunised and to catch up where appointments have been missed.
The Immunisation Pānui
The Immunisation Pānui contains updates on direct marketing, advertising, etc. and access to the Immunisation Dropbox which contains all collateral:
- If you do not receive this but would like to be on the list, send an email to Sandy Thambiah (Sandy.Thambiah@health.govt.nz)
- Here is the Dropbox link for all immunisation collateral: Dropbox: National Immunisation Programme – immunisation collateralThis is also li nked in the Key Links section at the top of this page.
Updated Immunisation Handbook v22 – 17 April 2023
On 11 April 2023, the Ministry of Health released version 22 of the Immunisation Handbook 2020.
You can find the handbook online here, or download it in full here. You can also find it in the Key Links section at the top of this page.
WEBINAR: World Hand Hygiene Day – 17 April 2023
Date: 27 April 2023
Time: 1pm-2pm
The webinar will be delivered via Zoom. Please email to register: hhnz@hqsc.govt.nz
Good hand hygiene is one of the simplest, most effective ways to prevent the spread of healthcare-associated infections, which makes it a key patient safety priority.
Te Tāhū Hauora Health Quality & Safety Commission (Te Tāhū Hauora) has led Hand Hygiene New Zealand (HHNZ), a national quality improvement programme to improve hand hygiene practice in Te Whatu Ora districts and private surgical hospitals throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. The programme is part of the Te Tāhū Hauora infection prevention and control programme, which aims to reduce the harm and cost of healthcare-associated infections.
HHNZ uses the World Health Organization’s multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy to drive culture change and establish best hand hygiene practice for every patient, every time.
In this webinar, the audience will hear from three speakers about quality improvement projects that have been implemented successfully as part of a local HHNZ programme.
Please share this event page with your colleagues and networks.
Who should attend?
Anyone who is involved in an HHNZ programme, including:
- hand hygiene leads and coordinators
- gold auditors
- personnel working in quality and patient safety
- infection prevention and control professionals.
Speakers
- Cath Robbins – National Infection Prevention and Control Programme, Southern Cross Healthcare. Cath will share the campaign that the infection prevention and control team recently rolled out across the Southern Cross hospital network. The campaign uses refreshed hand hygiene posters and hand hygiene ambassadors to improve hand hygiene compliance.
- Carmel Hurley-Watts – Waitaha Canterbury hand hygiene coordinator. Carmel will share the work undertaken in Waitaha Canterbury to improve hand hygiene access for patients and the district’s recent improvements with the visibility of their hand hygiene compliance rates.
- Vicki McKenzie – Infection prevention and control nurse, Bidwell Trust Hospital. Vicki will describe how she introduced the concept of ‘Take a moment’ to allow for point-of-care feedback and reflection on missed hand hygiene moments.
Registration
The webinar will be delivered via Zoom. Please email to register: hhnz@hqsc.govt.nz
If you have questions about this event, please email: hhnz@hqsc.govt.nz.
Is your healthpoint up to date? – 12 April 2023
Healthpoint has developed its back-end functions to allow providers to better indicate the services they offer. This includes tick boxes for most vaccinations, as well as the ability to add any services that are not listed.
It is really important you keep your healthpoint page up to date with the services you offer, your hours and how people can book in or if walk-ins are available. Nationally led campaigns for a number of vaccinations direct people to healthpoint to find a service near them, and it is also used by Healthline to support consumers to access services.
If you need support updating your page, contact helpdesk@healthpoint.co.nz.
Release of the Immunisation Taskforce report – 11 April 2023
On 6 April, the NIP released the Immunisation Taskforce Report. The Report provides advice to Te Whatu Ora and Te Aka Whai Ora on how we can best utilise our size and scale to rapidly improve immunisation rates for tamariki and achieve equity across all population groups. The Report includes 54 recommendations, all of which have been accepted by Te Whatu Ora, with 26 already underway.
The media release, which includes a link to the Immunisation Taskforce Report, is published on the Te Whatu Ora Website.
March 2023
New Immunisation website – 27 March 2023
We're pleased to let you know the new immunisation website – https://www.immunise.health.nz/ –is now live. This has been a real team effort with many partners, providers and stakeholders involved in getting us to this point.
This new Te Whatu Ora website has been developed to meet a critical gap in the information currently available online to whānau when making decisions about immunisations for their tamariki, rangatahi and themselves. It will also be a key component of a wider programme of focused communications to support our goal to increase childhood immunisation getting underway in April.
Although the site has a child immunisation focus – the content has been written to cover wider whānau immunisations too.
We hope the site feels relevant to all people living in Aotearoa New Zealand - and is warm, friendly, reassuring, and easy to understand.
A new tool we’re particularly excited about is the ability to create a personalised immunisation schedule for a child: https://www.immunise.health.nz/get-a-personalised-immunisation-schedule/
Please take some time to look around and feedback on anything – whether positive or negative. We’re particularly keen to hear what you think might be missing. This is the first phase and we will continue to build on the foundation it presents.
At the moment we’re sharing the site with the sector in order to gather feedback, and in a couple of weeks, we’ll start to actively drive traffic to the site. We look forward to hearing what you think.
New website for Childhood Immunisation to go live mid-March – 13 March 2023
The National Immunisation Programme Communications and Engagement team is developing a public-facing microsite that enables parents, caregivers, and their whānau to understand why immunisation is so important for pēpi, tarmariki,and rangatahi.
The new website will provide information about why vaccination is important, what vaccinations are recommended and available, appropriate age these vaccines are administered, and where and how to get these vaccinations.
It will also support a wider childhood immunisation campaign that will include paid advertising, social media content, and marketing collateral.
IMAC WEBINAR: Vaccinating Health Workers and new Stage 2 training – 7 March 2023
Date: Wednesday 15 March 2023, 12-1pm
Teams live event - follow this link to attend the webinar
The webinar is for any potential or current employers of VHWs, their supervisors or VHWs themselves.
The webinar will cover:
1. The Journey of the VHW role so far
2. Detail on the new VHW Stage 2 training
3. Experiences of Māori and Pharmacist providers employing VHWs (TBC)
4. Walk through on how to access the training and the new IMAC Learning Management System (LMS)
5. Where to next for the VHW
6. Questions and answers
February 2023
National Immunisation Programme’s stakeholder hui recording – 21 February 2023
Thank you to those who attended the NIP stakeholder hui held last week.
At the hui Dr Caroline Hart provided a clinical update, then followed by an update from Astrid Koornneef, Interim Director Prevention on our priority work in the Programme including MMR, the Cold Chain Standards Review, Under 5s COVID-19 vaccine for immuno-compromised Tamariki aged 6 months to 4 years, Childhood Immunisation, and Bivalent. We concluded with an presentation on Aotearoa Immunisation Register from the AIR team.
If you missed the hui a recording is available here: Dropbox: NIP stakeholder hui 16 February 2023.
National Immunisation Programme Hui – 7 February 2023
We warmly invite you to the upcoming National Immunisation Programme hui, which is being held from 1.30pm to 2.30pm, Thursday 16 February 2023.
This hui is designed to keep our vaccination and immunisation teams up to date with plans and activities undertaken by the National Immunisation Programme. The hui will include the following presentations:
- Astrid Koornneef Programme update
- Dr Caroline Hart: Clinical updates
- Sarah Keenan: Aotearoa Immunisation Register
If you have specific issues you’d like addressed, please email them to us before Wednesday 15 February 2023.
Please copy the hui invitation details below into your calendar, and feel free to share this invitation with your colleagues who may wish to attend.
Date: Thursday 16 February 2023
Time: 1.30pm – 2.30pm
Link: Microsoft Teams meeting
Click here to join the meeting
Meeting ID: 497 681 435 067
Passcode: iiUXMb
We hope you can join us, but if you can’t we will share a recording of this hui with you.
Weather event preparedness – 1 February 2023
Please ensure you have plans in place to move vaccines off-site in case of power failures, ensuring staff are familiar with how to cool chilly bins and use recording devices, and have frozen ice packs ready. This is particularly important to protect against the loss of vaccines in short supply, for example, the mpox vaccine and infant Pfizer vaccine.
January 2023
Holiday vaccine ordering – 17 January 2023
Due to Auckland anniversary day on Monday 30 January and Waitangi Day on Monday 6 February, there will be no flights operating to airfreight supplies of Boostrix and mpox vaccines to the South Island. This means there will be no deliveries to the South Island on 31 January and 7 February.
Please order minimum 3 weeks of stock coverage during the week commencing 23 January to ensure coverage over the holiday periods.
If you have any queries, please contact shelby.davidson@southerndhb.govt.nz.
AIR training course – 10 January 2023
The IMAC training course “2022 Getting Started with the Aotearoa Immunisation Register“ is now live on its eLearning platform.
You can register for the course here: https://lms.immune.org.nz/course/26292/2022-getting-started-aotearoa-immunisation-register
You can find more information on AIR here.
December 2022
An update on the Aotearoa Immunisation Register – 21 December 2022
You will already know from our earlier updates that the Aotearoa Immunisation Register (AIR) will eventually replace the current National Immunisation Register (NIR) and supersede the COVID-19 Immunisation Register (CIR).
The AIR vaccinator portal is now live and the team have commenced signing up Pharmacy users to the AIR as a replacement for ImmuniseNow from December 2022. The AIR system has a new role called a ‘facility manager’. The facility manager role will give a Pharmacy (or a group of Pharmacies) the flexibility to manage their own AIR users. When a facility manager for a Pharmacy is signed up, we will then work with the facility manager to support their users to complete the sign-up process. Pharmacy facility managers can commence their sign up now by contacting air.engagement@health.govt.nz.
Other providers in the Immunisation sector will be invited to adopt the AIR vaccinator portal in a staged approach in late January to February before the commencement of 2023 flu campaign. For providers that use an integrated PMS systems that connects to NIR, there is no requirement for you to use the AIR vaccinator portal. We are working with your software vendor to connect your system to AIR. (Most GPs will fit into this category)
For those that currently do not use a system (electronic) that can submit information to the NIR, the AIR vaccinator portal will be available for you to adopt in early Q1 2023 commencing with providers who will participate in the 2023 flu campaign. (Occupational Health, Community providers, Public Health Units)
From 9 November, General Practices are scheduled to start receiving notifications when any of their enrolled patients have received vaccinations elsewhere that have been recorded in AIR. Vaccinations recorded in AIR will not be viewable on the NIR. We continue to work with medical software vendors to support the shift required to connect PMS with the AIR as this work progresses over 2023.
You can find more information on AIR here.
Top three FAQ’s asked during sign up are:
Q: How do I request to be a facility manager or a user at multiple sites?
A: Once you complete your sign up for one site and can access the AIR, you will be able to request access to additional sites using the vaccinator portal. The AIR admin team will authorise requests for additional facility manager access. Approvals for access for all other roles are authorised by the facility manager for the site being requested.
Q: I am signing up to the AIR as a facility manager but I also need the role of vaccinator – how do I get both?
A: You will only ever need one login to the AIR. Once you complete your sign up as a facility manager role and can access the AIR then you can request access to other roles at a site using the vaccinator portal. As the facility manager you will approve this access. For example, when you sign up as a facility manager, then once you get your access to the AIR, you can assign yourself a vaccinator role as well.
Q: I have signed up as a vaccinator, but I also need to be a facility manager – what do I do?
A: You will need to contact the help desk to ask to have the facility manager role added to your profile. help@imms.min.health.nz
Recording and presentation slides from the recent vaccine hesitancy and misinformation Webinar – 12 December 2022
On Friday 2 December, the National Immunisation Programme hosted a webinar where Dr Alison Buttenheim from the University of Pennsylvania spoke about behavioural science approaches to addressing vaccine hesitancy and disinformation.
If you missed the webinar, a recording, and the presentation slides are available. As we ran out of time during the webinar to answer all the questions, Dr Buttenheim responded to those questions separately.
The recording, presentation slides, and Q&As can be found in the NIP Dropbox here.
Regional portals and Healthlink re IMAC – 12 December 2022
You can now send a query to IMAC through HealthLink via the HealthLink tab on Practice Management systems for referrals. We welcome queries from health care providers regarding vaccinations, indications, schedule, assessment of possible adverse events and related matters.
For anything requiring an immediate response please continue to call 0800 IMMUNE (0800 466 863). However, if you wish to refer children to Immunisation Outreach please use the Care Connect e-referral form or your local equivalent.
Aotearoa Immunisation Register (AIR) updates – 12 December 2022
The Aotearoa Immunisation Register vaccinator portal is now live.
More information on what Te Whatu Ora is doing to manage the change over is on their website here.
Any issues and queries need be sent to: air.engagement@health.govt.nz.
November 2022
Te Whatu Ora, National Immunisation Programme webinar 10 November – 9 November 2022
Te Whatu Ora is holding a National Immunisation Programme Stakeholder hui tomorrow, Thursday 10 November 12pm - 1pm, via Teams.
This lunchtime hui is designed to keep our vaccination and immunisation teams up to date with plans and activities undertaken by the National Immunisation Programme. The hui will include the following updates:
- Overall programme updates
- Vaccine updates
- Equity programme updates
We are very pleased to confirm the hui will include a presentation from the team at Kōkiri Hauora and Social services on the great mahi they have been doing in the vaccination service within the community.
Click here to join the meeting Meeting ID: 492 624 400 300, Passcode: hw3bNE
October 2022
Pertussis (whooping cough) posters – 10 October 2022
More than 500 pharmacies are now offering Pertussis vaccines, free of charge, to pregnant people.
To help encourage pregnant people to take advantage of this opportunity, we have created a new, downloadable poster pharmacies can print and display instore. We have also produced a downloadable flyer that can be printed and distributed to pregnant people to help raise awareness of the vaccine’s importance, and where and when they should get it.
Social media tiles are coming soon.
You can access these files on our Dropbox here.
Remember, you can find a link to the main National Immunisation Programme dropbox under the Key Links section at the top of this page.
September 2022
IMAC video on vaccine preparation – 27 September 2022
As more providers begin offering Boostrix vaccinations, we wanted to share this helpful IMAC video on Boostrix vaccine preparation: IMAC_Boostrix on Vimeo.