Problem Solving for Immunization Programs

Course Overview

This material will cover immunization basics and survey the public health, sociological, and economic literature, identifying and analyzing common problems using a standard problem-solving approach. Topics will span developed and developing countries and will include vaccine-delivery strategies, program management and supervision, epidemiological surveillance, community participation, and disease eradication. Students will analyze actual vaccination data using the U.S. Center for Disease Control's CASA software program. Once you've completed the course, you should have gained the necessary tools to identify and formulate innovative solutions to common problems faced by immunization program managers and policymakers.

Course Objectives

This course will provide you with a multidisciplinary perspective on the organization, requirements, and logistics of vaccination programs. After completing this course, you should be able to do the following:

• Discuss the basic methods of logistics, monitoring, and surveillance
• Explain how logistics, monitoring, and surveillance are used in disease eradication efforts.
• Identify and solve program inefficiencies and barriers to program performance.
• Design and evaluate immunization program problem-solving interventions with the theoretical background you'll receive in this course.

Readings

There is no required textbook. For most lectures, there will be both required and recommended readings drawn from various journals. All articles will be available in PDF format.

Course Topics

The course covers the following topics:

• The anatomy of an immunization program
• Surveillance and field measurement tools
• Methods for improving immunization provider performance
• Constituents of an eradication strategy: The case of polio
• Health behavioural models
• Theories and examples of community action
• Future directions for immunization

Course Format

The course will consist of:

Lectures: There will be two weekly lectures, each approximately 1.25 hours long. The lectures are organized into modules which correspond to different dimensions of immunization programs. Salient points of the lectures are highlighted in the accompanying slide presentations, as are the corresponding reading assignments. Once the lectures have been posted, you may return to them for review at any point during the course.

Readings: There is no required textbook. For most lectures, there will be both required and recommended readings drawn from various journals. All articles will be available in PDF format.

Reading List (53 KB) This document contains a comprehensive list of all readings assigned for this course.

Practical Exercises: Students will download a software program called CASA, which they will use for the CASA exercises. The exercises will entail analyzing vaccination records from several immunization centres and producing reports.