Increasing influenza vaccination rates through a high school classroom intervention

Background: Alachua County has offered School Located Influenza Vaccination (SLIV) to kindergarten through 12th grade students for three years. As is true nationwide, the immunization rate of high school students has been much lower than the for K-8 students. Description: We developed a single 50 minute classroom session that included a power point presentation and a class exercise, the Community Immunity Game, designed to demonstrate the impact of influenza immunization on a group. The game involved simulating two influenza outbreaks; one in an unimmunized population and the second outbreak in a population in which half are immunized. The session was delivered by high school science teachers to 382 9th graders in one high school in the county. Intent to receive an influenza vaccination was assessed via pre and post-tests administered during the same session. Results: Forty-six percent of the students, who initially did not intend to get immunized, changed their intent following the intervention (p < 0.0001). Further, the percent of students in the intervention group who received immunization at school (141/382, 36.9%) was significantly higher than the percent achieved among other Alachua County high school 9th graders (338/1566, 21.6%; p<0.0001). We compared the results across multiple teachers and found no significant difference. Conclusions: This intervention is a useful tool to increase both intent to be immunized and immunization rates among 9th grade students in a SLIV program.