Enabling life-course immunisation through pharmacy-based vaccination: Access to data and vaccination records

Page: Vaccination

Enabling life-course immunisation through pharmacy-based vaccination: Access to data and vaccination records

FIP is committed to supporting countries to develop policies that enable pharmacies and pharmacists to deliver integrated vaccination services throughout the life-course and as part of wider national immunisation policies. This event is delivered as part of a new FIP programme supported by Pfizer, which aims to provide our members with approaches and tools for tackling key policy enablers that determine equity, access and sustainability of pharmacy-based life-course immunisation.

The success of pharmacy-based vaccination depends on various policy factors, one of which is access to data and vaccination records. FIP data shows that pharmacists’ access to patient vaccination records vary widely across countries and regions. Understanding the different models and country experiences is key to wider implementation. This event will feature pharmacy leadership bodies from across the world explaining their progress with access to records and how this impacts access to vaccination through pharmacies.

Enabling life-course immunisation through pharmacy-based vaccination: Regulations and prescribing

FIP is committed to supporting countries to develop policies that enable pharmacies and pharmacists to deliver integrated vaccination services throughout the life-course and as part of wider national immunisation policies. This event is delivered as part of a new FIP programme supported by Pfizer, which aims to provide our members with approaches and tools for tackling key policy enablers that determine equity, access and sustainability of pharmacy-based life-course immunisation.

Statement of policy on the role of pharmacy in life-course vaccination

Pharmacists are uniquely positioned to support the vaccination of various population groups and to remove barriers to achieving high vaccination coverage rates, including hard-to-reach or high-risk population groups. This statement discusses the importance of integrating pharmacists into expanded vaccination schedules and strategies beyond infancy to ensure access to vaccines for all age groups, including adults and older persons. It also discusses the important role of pharmacists in building vaccine confidence and addressing vaccine hesitancy.

Pharmacy-based vaccination: Recent developments, success stories and implementation challenges (2023)

This report provides an update in terms of qualitative insights on recent developments and success stories of pharmacy-based vaccination in several countries, as well as an overview of some of the challenges that some countries are still facing to introduce this valuable professional service by pharmacists. The report also aims to uphold FIP’s global and regional advocacy of vaccination-related roles by pharmacists, and to provide FIP member organisations with examples that can support their own process and advocacy. The report includes a compilation of 17 case studies and country updates by FIP member organisations from countries with remarkable recent developments in this area, followed by the report from an insight board (focus group) discussion with countries that are at different stages of introducing pharmacy-based vaccination or that are facing specific challenges to achieve this goal.

IFPMA Country landscape report on life-course immunisation

Immunization is the greatest success story of the twentieth century. Vaccines eliminated most of the childhood diseases that used to cause millions of deaths, making possible a life
without disabilities caused by certain communicable diseases like polio for the first time in human history. In the twenty first century, though, the fruits of modern medicine are not reaching some of the most vulnerable, making global health insecure against vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs) once more.

Supporting life-course immunisation through pharmacy-based vaccination: enabling equity, access and sustainability. A toolkit for pharmacists (2023)

Health equity is only achieved when there are no differences in the quality of and access to health care among all groups and at all ages in a society. Whether to an infant, a child, a young adult, or an older adult, the quality of health care should not change. Similarly, access to care should not vary throughout an individual’s life. Because inequities are cumulative, their impacts are not confined to one stage of an individual’s life but rather remain and affect a person’s
life years afterwards. In addition, the impacts are not restricted to a particular individual, but can affect the lives of those around. Vaccine inequities, too, especially among people of different ages, have a cumulative effect. Inequitable access to vaccines not only leaves people at risk of contracting and spreading deadly viruses but also leads to more virus variants emerging, affecting a whole population, even those vaccinated.

Pharmacy-led vaccination services: Regulatory selfassessment and implementation tool

This self-assessment tool will help to identify strengths and areas for improvement in order to inform vaccination policy and planning efforts. It is an aid to help national ministries of health, regulators and national pharmacy organisations in assessing overall vaccination programmes and the state of legislation and regulations within their countries to facilitate vaccination and enhanced patient care through the pharmacy workforce and community pharmacies. The tool will help with vaccination planning and the utilisation of the pharmacy workforce in primary healthcare and community-based vaccination programmes.

While this tool is not exhaustive in content and has yet to be validated, it is based on the experiences of professional regulators in countries where pharmacy-led vaccination has been successfully introduced and regulated. The checklist is based on the objective to deploy the pharmacy workforce and utilise pharmacies to increase access to vaccination services.

This tool is primarily addressed to regulators and policy-makers to support them in developing strategies or enabling regulatory frameworks in countries where pharmacists and the pharmacy workforce have a limited role in vaccination strategies. It may also be useful as a review tool in countries where the pharmacy workforce already provides vaccine-related care but wishes to further expand or consolidate such roles.

This tool addresses the enabling legislation that is needed and makes reference to additional clarification of the limitations and parameters in the current regulations for future learning. Typically, new or changing legislation can be slow and difficult to draft and enact, but regulations can be made through a simpler and more agile process. Implementation might further require clarifying policies or standards which become the real “how to” guide for healthcare professionals from a public protection perspective.

FIP, its Professional Regulators Advisory Group and its member organisations are a resource for the drafting and development of supportive regulations, policies, standards of care and training programmes. Clearly, the desired goal is to create legislative change to establish enhanced patient care and patient access to vaccinations through pharmacy practice.

Vaccines for special-risk groups: roundtable summit

Often, the most vulnerable population groups experience severe or even lethal forms of vaccine-preventable diseases, as well as losses in quality of life, functional ability and productivity. It is essential to identify these groups and their specific vaccination needs, and to take measures to improve vaccine confidence and uptake among them. Pharmacists play a key role in raising awareness and building confidence in vaccines, and in promoting a convenient access to vaccinations. Over several months, FIP organised a series of events focusing on the vaccination needs of several special-risk population groups. With this final event, we invite you to engage with an intersectoral roundtable on this topic and witness the launch of a summary publication and a series of short videos to support pharmacists in these roles.

By the end of the session participants will:
– Understand the specific vaccination needs of several special-risk population groups
– Become familiar with FIP’s resources on vaccination for special-risk groups
– Discuss the role of pharmacists in promoting vaccination uptake among different special-risk groups

Enabling life-course immunisation through pharmacy-based vaccination: Service remuneration models

Remuneration of pharmacy vaccinations is one of the key policy enablers of pharmacy-based vaccinations, and thus life-course immunisation. FIP data shows that remuneration models vary widely across countries and regions. Understanding the different models and country experiences is key to wider implementation. This event will feature a number of pharmacy leadership bodies sharing their remuneration models and journeys for the benefit of policy-enablement everywhere.

This event is delivered as part of a new FIP programme supported by Pfizer, which aims to provide our members with approaches and tools for tackling key policy enablers that determine equity, access and sustainability of pharmacy-based life-course immunisation.

We work with

Shortcuts

Our contact details Disease prevention programme
Andries Bickerweg 5
2517 JP The Hague
Netherlands

E: fip@fip.org