In our new video series, “Take 2,” faculty and researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health provide the lowdown on a compelling, engaging question in global health–think of it as Public Health 101. In this video, Marie McCormick, Sumner and Esther Feldberg Professor of Maternal and Child Health in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, talks about why vaccines are critical for public health.

Afghanistan and Pakistan are two of the remaining three countries where polio hasn’t yet been eliminated. Courageous polio vaccinators travel to remote villages often in dangerous areas to immunize millions of children. Thanks to the heroic effort of these vaccinators the world is on the brink of eradicating this disease.

Getting vaccines to children in developing countries is the key to preventing pneumococcal disease, which kills 800,000 to 1 million children worldwide ever year. This video explains how five national governments, GAVI alliance partners, and the Gates Foundation are using a new approach to financing called Advance Market Commitments to get affordable vaccines to the developing world.

Since their introduction over the past several years, rotavirus vaccines have been saving lives from the leading cause of severe childhood diarrhea. In April 2016, the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases published new data from several countries recording evidence of this lifesaving impact (http://bit.ly/26XzI3V). We talked to researchers from PATH and the US CDC to understand the importance of rotavirus vaccines within an integrated approach to defeat diarrheal disease.

Two vaccines have brought us to the brink of a polio-free world: the oral polio vaccine and the inactivated polio vaccine. Learn how these vaccines work and the different, complementary roles they have to play in delivering a polio-free world. This is one of a series of six videos on what is being done to secure a polio-free world: from the vaccines that are being used to stop polio; to how the oral polio vaccine is being phased out from April 2016 to remove any risk of vaccine-derived polioviruses, starting with the switch from trivalent to bivalent oral polio vaccine in April 2016; and how securely containing polioviruses within laboratories and vaccine manufacturing sites will keep every last child protected, long into the future.

Often related to distance and hardship in transit, parents in developing countries will overcome tremendous obstacles for the chance to vaccinate their children. This video follows the journey of the vaccine and of the recipient in a remote village in Haiti.

In September 2014, Nepal became the first Gavi eligible country in the world to introduce the Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV). But in Nepal, the introduction of IPV was seen as a piece of the larger strategy to strengthen the entire immunization system. In this video, learn about the strategy that immunization workers in Nepal are using to ensure that every child in every village receives every vaccine. Nepal is not alone in their efforts. By the end of 2015, more than 100 other countries will also be taking this important step towards polio eradication and introducing IPV.

The Ministry of Health in Benin has used an innovative approach that combines modeling with qualitative and quantitative assessment to identify the strategic direction for optimizing the vaccine supply chain. These guidelines have been implemented for demonstration purposes in the Comé health area with the support of the Agence de Médecine Préventive (AMP) via the LOGIVAC project. The activities carried out since 2013 have had a positive impact on the performance of the health system, in particular by ensuring better availability of quality vaccines in health facilities

Immunization Academy now offers more than 30 short, practical training videos on Data Monitoring in Swahili at https://www.immunizationacademy.com/sw/videos/category/planning.

“What do you say to parents who decline or refuse HPV vaccination of their children?” Dr. Alix Casler, FAAP, offers her responses to parents who delay or reject HPV vaccine during this segment of the “How I Recommend HPV Vaccine” series.

This webinar describes what TechNet 21 is and how it is used to discuss ideas regarding all aspects of immunization systems. Illustrations of how resources can be accessed and used as well as how one can add and create their own collection of resources to share with others are covered. it should be of interest to both technical and non-technical personnel with an interest in current thinking in immunization systems.

A short 3 minute video explaining how OpenLMIS is helping change health outcomes by making high-quality data available when and where it's needed most.

Developed by the MEASURE Evaluation Strategic Information for South Africa project, Inconsistent and incomplete data gathered at health facilities compound problems as managers try to make decisions based on evidence. Developed by the MEASURE Evaluation Strategic Information for South Africa project, this video explains how Consistency, Correctness, and Completeness leads to better data, better decisions, and better health care.

In 2016, 155 countries and territories from around the world made history in a coordinated global health effort that took us one step closer to achieving polio eradication. During a two-week time period in April, the health sector swapped out one type of polio vaccine for another, in what is known as “the switch.”

Fewer children in the United States are getting vaccinated. That’s bad news for those kids, and also for public health in general. Often, the response is to argue and debate and get angry at people who are we see as making terrible, irrational decisions. Instead of doing that, let’s use science to understand why this is happening in the first place.

World Polio Day is a day when we celebrate the health workers and volunteers who are going to great lengths to fight polio. Never before in the history of polio have so few children in so few countries contracted the crippling virus – but we cannot rest until the number of cases is zero.

More than 1.7 billion doses of polio vaccine were delivered to children last year alone and continued focus is key to the complete eradication of polio.

The BID Initiative is partnering with users throughout the health system to introduce policies and practices aimed at creating a data-use culture. From community micro-training videos to data use campaigns to targeted, supportive supervision; health workers use data to make better decisions on service delivery and ways to improve care.

Through the BID Learning Network (BLN), many countries in sub-Saharan Africa participate in the design and testing of BID tools and interventions. The BLN enables peer-to-peer learning exchanges to ensure BID Initiative’s solutions will be relevant for and adopted by other countries interested in improving their health programs through better data and decision-making.