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January 31, 2023
In April of 2022, the MIIC texting program for overdue or recommended immunization reminders expanded to include routine immunizations in addition to COVID-19. This program continues to be free to providers, with providers across many different organization types participating (health systems, local public health, pharmacies, federally qualified health centers and others).
For routine immunization texting, MIIC currently partners with 20 different providers and has reached over 20,000 unique clients. To date, 7.5% of clients who have received a text opted out of messaging, 15% of messages were undeliverable and 20 clients requested a translated message. The most exciting part? Nearly 32% of kids whose parents received a text received at least one immunization after receiving the text.
We will continue to expand the texting program to improve immunization coverage in Minnesota! Please email the MIIC Help Desk if you would like to participate at health.miichelp@state.mn.us.
Carver County Public Health
Carver County Public Health was one of the first organizations to partner with us to implement MIIC-based text reminders with their clients and with people living in Carver County. What began as texts reminding people to receive their second dose of COVID-19 vaccine has now expanded to COVID-19 booster doses for adult populations and routine immunizations for young children and teens. Carver County says that one benefit of the texts was building awareness of their vaccine scheduler as well as the availability of vaccine records in MIIC. At the onset of the texting program, they communicated with surrounding clinics about the project. Those clinics, in turn, worked to improve historical MIIC data for families. While this did result in some additional effort for surrounding clinics who had to begin reporting historical immunizations to MIIC, this work helped ensure that clients who received texts were accurately due for vaccine. Carver County would like to especially thank Lakeview Clinics for their support in process improvement for historical immunization data reporting.
Carver County has said that the texting program has helped them feel significantly more prepared if or when measles cases arise. Their extensive commitment to increasing immunization coverage shows in the results of this text reminder project. To date, of the over 4,000 children who have received a text, 33% received at least one immunization following the text. In late 2022, Carver also began texting specifically for MMR vaccine given the cases detected over the summer. Thank you, Carver County, for your work on these effective reminder/recall strategies!
Lake Superior Community Health Center (LSCHC)
Lake Superior Community Health Center began sending text message-based immunization reminders to their 24-to-35-month-old and 13-to-16-year-old patients in 2022 for overdue or recommended immunizations. The project kicked off with a 30-minute phone call with MIIC staff to define age cohorts and text content. After that, the program was off and running! Since the texting program is fully automated and pulls data directly from MIIC, LSCHS staff are able to focus on other program needs.
To date, 34% of all adolescents who received a text received at least one immunization after the text and 100% of the younger children received an immunization! LSCHS has said they recommend other providers partner with MIIC to implement the text reminders because it’s an easy way to help support vaccine uptake and relieve known coverage gaps in Minnesota, especially in the younger age groups. Thank you, LSCHS, for your partnership!
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