Investigators: Daniel Norman, Chris Blyth, Hannah Moore
External collaborators: Margie Danchin, Holly Seale
Children with co-morbidities are at greatest risk from influenza infection. This research will use a mixed methods approach to
- Identify children at risk of influenza
- Identify barriers to vaccine delivery
- Develop strategies to improve vaccination update The project will include an in-depth analyses of existing data sets (FluCAN) to identify those children at greatest risk of influenza and the effectiveness of vaccination in those with underlying comorbid conditions.
To understand current practice, facilitators and barriers for influenza vaccination of children with medical comorbidities within the hospital setting, an analysis of paediatric influenza vaccination programs will be performed at six Australian hospitals including Royal Children’s Hospital, Perth Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital at Westmead, and Sydney Children's Hospital Randwick.
An understanding of the programs will be sought by:
(a) assessing the hospital vaccination pathways, programs and infrastructure using a series of hypothetical paediatric patients;
(b) In-depth interviews with hospital immunisation providers to better understand the different models of vaccine delivery and barriers experienced by sub-specialty and immunising services and
(c) In-depth interviews with families of children with medical comorbidities who experienced non-influenza related hospitalisation during 2019’s influenza season.
This approach will produce a novel understanding of current influenza vaccine programs from patient perspectives and how programs differ between hospitals and clinical specialties/departments.
Using current practice and feedback from key stakeholders, we will be developing an intervention to improve vaccine uptake in those at greatest risk of influenza. We hope to implement this into practice in 2021 or 2022.