Federal perspective: The IIS sentinel site project: Overview and recent assessments

The IIS sentinel site project is a federally-sponsored project that funds five states (Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, and Oregon) and the District of Columbia to demonstrate the usefulness of IIS data and illustrate how these data can be used to support immunization program evaluation and epidemiologic activities. Each of these sites has high provider site participation and child enrollment in their geographic areas. In addition, each site conducts quarterly, semi-annual, and annual monitoring of their IIS data. This project is unique for several reasons, including that it affords timely data analysis to federal and state agencies, allows for comprehensive local coverage assessments, enables targeting of specific populations, and serves as a springboard for more extensive evaluation projects. Results of two recent sentinel site data queries conducted at the federal level include a finding of influenza vaccination coverage among children aged 6-23 months of 6.6% to 60.4% and a finding of low levels of the percent of children extraimmunized at 36 months of age. Federal-level projects in progress include an analysis of the use of Pneumococcal Polysaccharide Vaccine (PPV23) among children with certain chronic health conditions and an examination of Menactra uptake in adolescents. Various groups within CDC have used data generated from the sentinel sites for assessment activities, including the Office of Vaccine Safety, the Division of Viral Hepatitis, and the Division of STD Prevention. By the end of 2007, the CDC hopes to expand the IIS sentinel site project to include at least 10 grantees.