Providence

Providence Health & Services clinics on the North Coast were honored at the Oregon Rural Health Conference in October for their work toward increasing pediatric immunizations.

Sherry Hazen, a nurse quality supervisor with Providence Seaside, explained that she and other clinic staff noticed a drop in childhood immunization rates during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Primary care providers like to focus on being able to provide and keep children updated on their immunizations to help prevent these childhood illnesses that could cause kids to get pretty sick,” she said. “So it’s something that we’ve always watched, but during the pandemic and kind of afterward, we found that people weren’t coming into the doctor’s office, weren’t coming into the hospitals unless they were really sick. And so this included children who would normally be coming in for yearly checks, which would also include getting caught up on their immunizations.”

In June 2022, only 37.7% of children who were patients at Providence’s North Coast clinics — located in Seaside, Cannon Beach and Warrenton — had received their pediatric Combination 10 vaccinations.

The Combination 10 refers to a series of immunizations — including polio, measles and chicken pox — children typically receive before they are 2 years old. The percentage of children who have received their Combo 10 vaccinations is a frequently used indicator of immunity in young children.

“If there’s a kid that is going to one of those clinics, they don’t have a primary care provider, they’re not up to date on their immunizations, they may have barriers being able to get up to Astoria to get to the county health department to get caught up on their immunizations,” Hazen said. “So we wanted to look at, what can we do to help them receive those immunizations?”

Providence obtained lists from Columbia Pacific Coordinated Care Organization — which oversees Medicaid through the Oregon Health Plan on the North Coast — and from local school districts to identify children in their care who were not up to date on their vaccinations. Then, they called families and encouraged them to bring their children in for vaccine-only appointments.

“We opened access for those kids, specifically for receiving their immunizations … If they needed primary care and they wanted to establish with us, we would do that,” Hazen said. “But getting the immunizations was the goal.”

By June, the outreach work showed a demonstrable impact: the rate of children under 2 who had received their Combo 10 vaccines increased to 42.8%. This increase earned Providence a Rural Quality Excellence Award from the Oregon Office of Rural Health.

Hazen emphasized that Providence contacted all children under their care who were not up to date on vaccinations, not just children under 2. She also noted that outreach to get kids vaccinated is an ongoing effort.

“These are specific immunizations that you want to have the series given by 24 months, and so somebody will hit 25 months and they’re aged out of it, but you’ve had five more people born that are moving into this group,” she said. “So it’s a continual project — something that is focused a lot on with health care, and specifically primary care and pediatricians — making sure that kiddos get in for their immunizations.”