Vaccine information resources

TABLE 122—5. Web Resources for Vaccine Information Recommended Internet Sites for Vaccine Information... 

Depending on scope and size of the response, significant administrative resources may be needed to process doses administered forms, vaccination records (including data entry), and information requests from the medical community and the general public. Policies must be in place for awarding compensatory time and/or paying overtime. New priorities for duties and responsibilities must be established and communicated to frontline staff as quickly as possible. 

Economic and humanistic outcome evaluations are now made as part of healthcare governance. The information gained from valid outcome measures can be used on a national level to allocate expenditures for treating various sectors of the population (e.g. the elderly, neonates, etc.) or to determine which programs will receive financial resources (e.g. vaccine programs vs. acute influenza treatments). Outcome information can be used to help make decisions regarding the inclusion or exclusion of drugs on formularies. Complete information about the economic, humanistic... 

A variety of resources are available for pharmacists interested in beginning a pharmacy-based immunization practice. Some of the best resource people include state health officers county health clinic physicians state department of health vaccine coordinators, especially those that administer the CHIP or KidCare-like immunization programs and local, board-certified primary care and infectious disease physicians. There are also a number of excellent web sites (see Table 2). The primary and most reliable source for vaccine and immunization information is the CDC web site. Most reliable infor mation about vaccines and immunization on other web pages is based on information first published in the public domain by the CDC in their journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). For those interested in keeping tabs on up-to-the-minute vaccine and immunization changes and recommendations, one should access the CDC listserv. This service forwards all issues of MMWR... 

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